Almafuerte

Pedro Bonifacio Palacios (May 13, 1854 – February 28, 1917), better known by his sobriquet, Almafuerte, was a famous Argentine poet. Below you'll find the almost impossible translation of some of his poems (believe me: they sound great in Spanish).


AVANTI (from the Italian “Let’s move”)

If you fall down ten times you get up twenty
another hundred, another thousand, or as needed so many ...
Surely won’t be your falls so catastrophic
Nor, by force of the logic, be so many.

With the same famine as the plants
greedily eat up the elusive humus,
swallowing the rancor for unfair offenses
saints and holy their characters have formed.
Almost asinine obsession, to be strong,
Nothing but that needs the creature,
and in any unhappy soul I figure
that the claws of the fate at last release them...

All incurable may find cure
Five seconds earlier than their death!


PIU AVANTI (from the Italian “Let’s move further”)


Do not give up, even being defeated,
Do not feel slave, even being enslaved
Trembling with fear, think yourself being brave,
and fiercely charge while you are in dismay.

Have the tenacity of the rusty nail,
who rusty and old acts still as nail,
not the coward boldness of the turkey
who shakes its plumage at every little sound.

Proceed as God who never cries,
Or as Lucifer, who never prays,
or as the oak, that in its greatness
needs water, but asking it refrains...

That biting and avenging thunders,
your head keep yelling rolling in the dust!