| |
|
I live, I die, I burn, I drown
I endure at once chill and cold
Life is at once too soft and too hard
I have sore troubles mingled with joys
Suddenly I laugh and at the same time cry
And in pleasure many a grief endure
My happiness wanes and yet it lasts unchanged
All at once I dry up and grow green
Thus I suffer love's inconstancies
And when I think the pain is most intense
Without thinking, it is gone again.
Then when I feel my joys certain
And my hour of greatest delight arrived
I find my pain beginning all over once again.
This poem is in the public domain.
|
Delmira Agustini (1886 - 1914), sometimes referred to by her pen name, "Joujou," was born in Uruguay to Italian parents. She began writing and publishing even before she became a teenager, and her work very quickly attracted attention--as did her beauty. Agustini was frustrated that her appeal as a women seemed inextricably intertwined with her success as a poet, although the erotic nature of her work certainly contributed to the problem. Agustini felt that a male poet, writing the same poems, would not have encountered the same attitudes and reactions. Considered the first significant female Latin American poet, and one of its best, Augustini's career was cut tragically short when she was murdered by a man whom she married and divorced within a month, but continued to see.
|
|
|
There are no comments for this poem yet.
|
|
|
