A small poem for a tense time

Sometimes I see a poem and just want to translate it for myself. Maybe I don’t like the translation I see, maybe it hasn’t been translated, maybe it just seems a challenge. I can’t remember why I translated this, but it seemed a good poem for this tense week:

Consolación

Es tan estrepitoso nuestro día,
Desgarrado por máquinas crueles,
Que el silencio recubre nuestra noche
Como si las alturas estelares
Nos consolaran de habitar la Tierra.

Jorge Guillén

*****

Consolation

Our days are so clamorous,
fractured by cruel machinery,
that when silence envelops our night,
it’s as if the stars far above us
were consoling us for living on Earth.

translated by Meryl Natchez