making sweet honey from old failures

This poem came to me as just an excerpt in the book Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach.  I was so taken by the second, beehive stanza that I went to look up the rest and found that I had mistakenly thought that Antonio Machado was a New World poet, and also that this is a rather well-known poem since its inclusion in a collection called Ten Poems to Change Your Life, published in 2003.


Last Night As I Was Sleeping

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that a spring was breaking
out in my heart.
I said: Along which secret aqueduct,
Oh water, are you coming to me,
water of a new life
that I have never drunk?

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that a fiery sun was giving
light inside my heart.
It was fiery because I felt
warmth as from a hearth,
and sun because it gave light
and brought tears to my eyes.

Last night as I slept,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that it was God I had
here inside my heart.

~ Antonio Machado
tr. Robert Bly

I've been thinking on this poem for a couple of weeks and found myself a little put off by "--marvelous error!--".  It might not have bothered me, except that it's important enough to be repeated in four of five stanzas.  Apart from the odd technical quality of the word "error," which doesn't seem to fit here, I kept thinking that "marvelous mistake" would work so much better:  alliteration, of course, but also that dreams are full of images that we take to be one thing or another, mis-takenly.

So I thought I'd go and see if anyone else had tranlasted the poem in a different way.   And now--duh--I find that Antonio answers my concern himself, with his original version in Spanish (please join me now in trusting the internet).  The imaginations of the poem are neither errors nor mistakes; they are "illusions, " and I'm inclined to believe Google Translate when it suggests "blessed illusion!"

Anoche cuando dormía
soñé ¡bendita ilusión!
que una fontana fluía
dentro de mi corazón.
Dí: ¿por qué acequia escondida,
agua, vienes hasta mí,
manantial de nueva vida
en donde nunca bebí?

Anoche cuando dormía
soñé ¡bendita ilusión!
que una colmena tenía
dentro de mi corazón;
y las doradas abejas
iban fabricando en él,
con las amarguras viejas,
blanca cera y dulce miel.

Anoche cuando dormía
soñé ¡bendita ilusión!
que un ardiente sol lucía
dentro de mi corazón.
Era ardiente porque daba
calores de rojo hogar,
y era sol porque alumbraba
y porque hacía llorar.

Anoche cuando dormía
soñé ¡bendita ilusión!
que era Dios lo que tenía
dentro de mi corazón.

I'm so in awe of those who have the language comfort to translate poetry, that most language-bound of genres, or to write in two languages.  I'm so far from that, that I have to question my right to nitpick over the choice of a single word, and yet --marvelous, blessed illusion and mistake!--isn't it fun to be led somewhere by a single word?
    
The roundup today is with Jim at Hey, Jim Hill!, which for some reason I find to be just about the best blog title ever.  : )