At Peace

Amado Ruiz de Nervo y Ordaz is, without doubt, one of the most outstanding poets of the Mexican literary canon. Born in Tepic, Nayarit in 1870, he moved to Mexico City in 1894, where he soon became a prominent journalist and published his first works. In 1900 he travelled to Paris, and later worked for the Mexican government as a diplomat in Madrid, Buenos Aires and Montevideo. A consummate novelist and essayist, Nervo is nevertheless best remembered for his poetry, whose delicate combination of mysticism and melancholy makes him perhaps one of the most emblematic ambassadors of the Mexican soul.

Artifex vitae artifex sui

So close to my twilight hour, I bless you, Life,
because you never gave me vain hope,
nor unjust labours, nor undeserved woe;

Because I see at the end of my rough road
that I was the architect of my own destiny;
that if what I tasted was sweet or bitter,
it was because I filled it with bile or with honey:
when I planted rosebushes I always harvested roses.

…True, these lush days of mine will be followed by winter:
but you never told me that May was eternal!

Of course my nights of woe seemed long to me;
but you never promised me only nights of joy;
and in exchange for them were others saintly serene …

I loved, I was loved, the sun caressed my face.
Life, you owe me nothing! Life, we are at peace!

Translated by Martin Boyd