<html aria-label="message body"><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><div dir="auto" style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">To Roosevelt</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><br style="font-size: 22px;"><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">It is with the voice of the Bible, or verse of Walt Whitman,</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">that we should reach you, Hunter!</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">Primitive and modern, simple and complicated,</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">with a bit of Washington and a bit of Nimrod.</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">You are the United States,</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">You are the future invader</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">the naive America who has Indian blood,</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">that still prays to Jesus Christ and still speaks Spanish.</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">You are a proud and strong exemplar of your race;</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">you are cultured, you are clever, you oppose Tolstoy.</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">And breaking horses, or murdering tigers,</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">you are an Alejandro Nebuchadnezzar.</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">(You’re a professor of energy,</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">as today’s madmen say.)</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">You think life is fire,</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">that progress is eruption;</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">where you put your bullet</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">you put the future.</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">No.</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">The United States is strong and big.</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">When it shakes there is a deep tremor</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">through the enormous vertebrae of the Andes.</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">If you clamor, you hear the roar of the lion.</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">Hugo said to Grant: “The stars are yours.”</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">(Just shining, rising, Argentine sun</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">and the Chilean star rises ...) You’re rich.</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">Join Hercules’ cult to Mammon’s;</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">and lighting the path to easy conquest,</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">Liberty raises her torch in New York.</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">But our America, which had poets</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">from the old days of Netzahualcoyotl,</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">you have saved in the footsteps of the great feet of Bacchus</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">panic in the alphabet learned a while;</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">who consulted the stars, that knew Atlantis,</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">whose name comes to resonate in Plato</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">Since the ancient times of your life</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">living light, fire, perfume, love,</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">America’s great Montezuma, from the Inca,</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">redolent of America by Christopher Columbus</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">Catholic American, Spanish American,</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">The America where noble Cuahtemoc said:</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">“I’m not a bed of roses” that America</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">trembles in hurricanes and lives in Love,</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">men of Saxon eyes and barbarous soul lives.</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">And dreams. And loves, and vibrates, and is the daughter of the Sun</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">Be careful. Live the American Spanish!</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">There are thousand of puppies loose Leon Spanish.</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">Be required, Roosevelt, being God himself,</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">Rifleman the terrible and strong Hunter,</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">order to keep us in your tight grip.</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">And, You may count it all, missing one thing: God!</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;"> </span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">- Rubén Darío</span><div style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>(1867-1916)</span></div></div></body></html>