" Long Live! The Andes Mountain Range!
May the Costa Mountain Range lie low slain!"

Viva la Cordillera de los Andes by Nicanor Parra, Translated by T Wignesan


Long Live! The Andes Mountain Range!

I’m seized with a mad rage to yell
long live the Andes Mountain Range
may the Costa Mountain Range lie low slain

The reason I can hardly divine
but I can’t hold myself back:
Long Live! The Andes Mountain Range!
May the Costa Mountain Range lie low slain!

For forty full years now
I’ve wanted to step over the horizon,
go far beyond the limitations of my myopia,
but I just didn’t dare.
Now, by no means, Gentlemen
is there an end to my ratiocinations:
Long Live! The Andes Mountain Range!
May the Costa Mountain Range lie low slain!

Have they heard what I said?
There’s an end to my ratiocinations!
Long Live! The Andes Mountain Range!
May the Costa Mountain Range lie low slain!

Doubt there’s none over my lack of response
if they sever my vocal chords
(in such a case as this
it’s almost certain they will)
well, if they do stifle my voice
I would like to say I have no choice
but to accept the dashing of my very last hope.


I am a merchant
indifferent to the positions of the sun
a professor clad in green-coloured trousers
who comes apart drop by drop as dew
an insignificant bourgeois is what I am
in what way do red clouds matter to me?
Nevertheless I appear on balconies
in order to shout out what I offer:
Long Live! The Andes Mountain Range!
May the Costa Mountain Range lie low slain!

Pardon me if I’m going out of my mind
while in the garden made by Nature
but I have to keep shouting till death:
Long Live! The Andes Mountain Range!
May the Costa Mountain Range lie low slain!

© T. Wignesan – Paris, 2016