Versión castellana del poema “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” (1856) de Walt Whitman
English text at http://www.poetryfoundation.org
Spanish Interpretation by JMN
[Translator’s note: In what’s coming, I’ve preferred preterite tense over imperfect tense where the speaker gives vent to a rapture of connection transcending space-time, indeed his own mortality, with citizenry to come; he looks back at his own actions and emotions in an imagined future, evoking the parallelism with theirs. Though his actions and states of mind are repetitive — “many and many a time,” “I was refresh’d,” etc. — and therefore have imperfective aspect normally in Spanish, I conceive of the speaker as projectively lumping his life (with all its repetition) into a terminated and concluded dimension — elegiac hindsight from anticipated afterlife, so to speak — and therefore better conveyed by the preterite. I have open ears if a Spanish reader disagrees with my tense choice.]
Roughly one-third of part 3 follows. Remember, there are 9 parts.
(3 begun)
It avails not, time nor place—distance avails not,
Para nada sirve, ni tiempo ni lugar — ni para nada la distancia,
I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence,
Estoy con vosotros, hombres y mujeres de una generación, o de aquí a tantas generaciones,
Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt,
Igual lo que sentís al contemplar el río y el cielo, eso lo sentí yo,
Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd,
Igual que entre vosotros cualquiera es miembro de una muchedumbre viva, yo fui miembro de una muchedumbre,
Just as you are refresh’d by the gladness of the river and the bright flow, I was refresh’d,
Igual que os refrescáis con la alegría del rio y su flujo brillante, yo me refresqué,
Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift current, I stood yet was hurried,
Igual que quedáis parados y apoyados en la barra, y no obstante os precipitáis con la veloz corriente, yo me paré y me precipité,
Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships and the thick-stemm’d pipes of steamboats, I look’d.
Igual que contempláis los innumerables mástiles de barcos y las pipas de cañón grueso de los buques de vapor, yo contemplé.
(c) 2021 JMN. All rights reserved
EthicalDative 
‘Bad Boy’ Harpsichordist
Scott Ross moved to France when he was 12 years old. He studied harpsichord and organ at the Paris and Nice Conservatories, and in 1971 won the Bruges International Competition, in Belgium.
Five years before dying of AIDS in 1982 at age 38, Ross committed himself to recording the complete keyboard works of Scarlatti — 555 sonatas.
The full set had never before been recorded, let alone by a single artist, let alone on an instrument like that which its composer would have known. Vast swaths were hardly played at all.
“I have a quality — a vice, perhaps,” he says. “It’s called perseverance, which isn’t the same thing as patience. Patience I don’t possess, but perseverance? You’re talking to someone who recorded 555 Scarlatti sonatas. Well, that didn’t require any patience. I have no patience for anything whatsoever.”
In the video cited in this article, Ross quietly tutors a student, speaking French, at the keyboard. The toll his affliction has taken is etched in his gaunt face, yet with eyes and voice he conveys a masterful authority, serenity, empathy, teacherly tenderness — and yes, patience — that are indescribably moving.
Ross’s brief admonishment to his pupil, as the young man plays, crystallizes the experience: “Don’t look at me, look at the keyboard.”
(“He Was a ‘Bad Boy’ Harpsichordist, and the Best of HIs Age,” Zachary Woolfe, NYTimes, 2-26-21)
(c) 2021 JMN