El Poema Más Breve de Juan Ramón Jiménez

I heard the poem firstly in Japanese, recited by HANAFUBUKI (Yoko Shibata), whose videos are extraordinary.

(video by HANAFUBUKI)

Naturally, I was intrigued by the brevity of the poem, and I looked for the Spanish original. I found it on the blog of Gabriel Laguna from Córdoba.

Let's try a translation into English:

stop touching it,
the rose is as it is!

Gabriel Laguna says that it is El poema más breve de Juan Ramón Jiménez, and makes an interesting comparison with one of the odes of Horace (Oda I 38):

Persicos odi, puer, apparatus,
displicent nexae philyra coronae;
mitte sectari, rosa quo locorum
sera moretur.

simplici myrto nihil allabores
sedulus, curo: neque te ministrum
dedecet myrtus neque me sub arta
uite bibentem.

As Latin could be not our forte nowadays, here is an English translation made by William Cowper:

Boy, I hate their empty shows,
Persian garlands I detest,
Bring not me the late-bloom rose
Lingering after all the rest:

Plainer myrtle pleases me
Thus outstretched beneath my vine,
Myrtle more becoming thee,
Waiting with thy master's wine.

(Of course, Gabriel Laguna gives us also a translation in Castilian, here you go:

Muchacho: detesto el boato persa,
me desagradan las guirnaldas trenzadas sobre corteza de tilo;
deja de indagar dónde la rosa
crece, tardía.

Deseo que no te esfuerces, afanoso, por mejorar
el mirto: no cuadra mal contigo, esclavo,
el mirto, ni conmigo, mientras bebo
bajo la espesa fronda de la parra.)

There are three resemblances between the poems of Juan Ramón Jiménez and Horace, and they are obvious: the mention of a rose, the elusiveness in addressing the interlocutor, and the praise of simplicity.

For me, this short poem, heard firstly in the tongue of Yoko Shibata, speaks also of the beauty of the ephemeral (a great theme in the Japanese art), and calls in mind some verses that I love so much:

Mais elle était du monde,
où les plus belles choses.
Ont le pire destin ;
Et rose elle a vécu
ce que vivent les roses,
L'espace d'un matin.

(François de Malherbe: Consolation a Duperier, in Le Livre d'heures de Jeanne de Malherbe)

(The Thousand faces of HANAFUBUKI)

(Juan Ramón Jiménez)