To Roosevelt by Ruben Dario

Ruben Dario wrote "To Roosevelt" (for Teddy) shortly after the Spanish American War, when the rest of the Americas feared U.S. imperialism. It remains a strong statement about American power and the potential abuse of that power.

To Roosevelt

The voice that would reach you, Hunter, must speak
in Biblical tones, or in the poetry of Walt Whitman.
You are primitive and modern, simple and complex;
you are one part George Washington and one part Nimrod.
You are the United States,
future invader of our naive America
with its Indian blood, an America
that still prays to Christ and still speaks Spanish.
You are strong, proud model of your race;
you are cultured and able; you oppose Tolstoy.
You are an Alexander-Nebuchadnezzar,
breaking horses and murdering tigers.

(You are a Professor of Energy,
as current lunatics say).
You think that life is a fire,
that progress is an eruption,
that the future is wherever
your bullet strikes.
No.

The United States is grand and powerful.
Whenever it trembles, a profound shudder
runs down the enormous backbone of the Andes.
If it shouts, the sound is like the roar of a lion.

--Translated by Lysander Kemp

Ruben Dario, a native of Nicaragua, is considered one of the great poets of Spanish Literature, and was the leader of its Modernist movement. Dario's admirers included Pablo Neruda, Federico García Lorca, Jorge Louis Borges and Octavio Paz.