Lo fatal

Rubén Darío(1867–1916)

Cantos de vida y esperanza, 1905

Dichoso el árbol, que es apenas sensitivo,y más la piedra dura porque esa ya no siente,pues no hay dolor más grande que el dolor de ser vivo,ni mayor pesadumbre que la vida consciente.

Ser y no saber nada, y ser sin rumbo cierto,y el temor de haber sido y un futuro terror...Y el espanto seguro de estar mañana muerto,y sufrir por la vida y por la sombra y por

lo que no conocemos y apenas sospechamos,y la carne que tienta con sus frescos racimos,y la tumba que aguarda con sus fúnebres ramos,

¡y no saber a dónde vamos,ni de dónde venimos!...

From Cantos de vida y esperanza (1905), via the Spanish Wikisource transcription. No emendation was made.

Public domainThis poem is in the public domain. You may read it, copy it, recite it and publish it without asking anyone.

About the poem

«Lo fatal» closes Cantos de vida y esperanza (1905) and is the dark reverse of the whole book. Against the luminous, musical Darío, here speaks the one who envies the tree and the stone because they barely feel: there is no greater pain, he says, than to be alive and know it.

The poem names dread in its barest form: to be without direction, the horror of having been and the terror of what is coming, the certainty of tomorrow's death, the suffering for what we do not know. The master of sound and colour ends his book with the anguish of consciousness, with no ornament to ease it.

The verse is kept in Spanish. Translating it in passing would replace the work with a paraphrase of it.