[When from my counted days]

By Roberto Tejada b. 1964 Roberto Tejada

When from my counted days I think of

times still owed to me by tyrant love,

and my temples anticipate a frost

beyond the tribulation of my years

I see love’s counterfeit joys are a poison

reason sips from a glass raised

to those for whom hunger dare appear

in the guise of my honeyed daydream.

What potion of forgetting pleases

reason that by neglect of its duty

so toils against itself for satisfaction?

But my affliction seeks solace, measure

of the desire to be remedied and

the desire to overcome it love’s remedy

………………………………………………………………

Cuando imagino de mis breves días

los muchos que el tirano amor me debe

y en mi cabello anticipar la nieve,

más que en los años las tristezas mias,

veo que son sus falsas alegrías

veneno que en cristal la razón bebe

por quien el apetito se le atreve

vestido de mis dulces fantasías.

¿Qué hierbas del olvido ha dado el gusto

a la razón, que sin hacer su oficio

quiere contra razón satisfacelle?

Mas consolarse qiere mi disgust,

que es el deseo del remedio indicio,

y el remedio de amor, querer vencelle.

[Lope de Vega, 1562—1635]

Roberto Tejada, “[When from my counted days]” from Exposition Park. Copyright © 2010 by Roberto Tejada. Reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.

Source: Exposition Park (Wesleyan University Press, 2010)

Biography

An art historian, curator, and editor specializing in Latino and Latin American art, Roberto Tejada was born in Los Angeles. He earned a BA in comparative literature from New York University and a PhD in interdisciplinary media studies from the English Department at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He is the author of the poetry chapbooks Gift & Verdict (1999) and Amulet Anatomy (2001) as well as the full-length . . .

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