To Julia of Towns

(Translation of A Julia de Burgos)
by Julia de Burgos

The people already murmur that I am your enemy
because they say that in verse I give to the world myself.
They lie, Julia of Towns. They lie, Julia of towns.
The one that raises herself in my verses it is not your voice: it is my voice
because you are clothes and I am the essence;
and the deepest abyss tends between the two.

You are cold wrist of social lies,
and I, virile flesh of the human truth.
You, honey of courtesan hypocrisies; not I;
that in all my poems strip my naked heart.
You are like your world, egoistic; not I;
that in all I play to be what I am.
You are only the grave lady ladyness; not I,
I am the life, the force, the woman.

You are of your husband, of your master; not I;
I am of nobody, or everybody, because to all, to
all in my clean sentiment and in my thoughts I give.
You curl your hair and you paint yourself; not I;
to me the wind culrs me, to me the sun paints me.
You are household lady, resigned, submissive,
tied to the prejudices of men; not I;
that I am Rocinante running rampant
smelling horizons of justice of God.

Within yourself you do not command;
everybody commands you; your husband, your
parents, your relatives, the priest, the seamstress,
the theater, the casino, the car, the jewels,
the banquet, champagne, the sky
and the hell, and the one that will say social command you.
Not in me, my single heart commands in me,
my single thought; I am who commands me.

You, flower of aristocracy; and I, the flower of the town.
You in yourself have everything and to all you owe,
whereas I, my nothing I owe to no one.
You, nailed to the static ancestral dividend,
and I, a one in the cipher of the social divisor
we are the deadly duel that approaches fatal.

When the multitudes run agitated
leaving behind ashes of burnt injustices,
and when with the torch of the seven virtues,
after the seven sins, the multitudes run,
against you, and all that is unjust and the inhumane,
I will go in the middle of them with the torch in the hand.