Poetry snippet

While looking for something completely different today, I came across this translation by Alastair Reid of a poem by the Mexican poet José Emilio Pacheco.

High treason

I do not love my country. Its abstract splendor
is beyond my grasp.
But (although it sounds bad) I would give my life
for ten places in it, for certain people,
seaports, pinewoods, fortresses,
a run-down city, gray, grotesque,
various figures from its history
mountains
(and three or four rivers).

Reid, who is Scottish, says that this so coincided with a poem he might have written himself that in translating it, he felt as if he was writing the original. Although I cannot say the same thing, in modestly copying and pasting his translation, I feel that I am at least endorsing the sentiment.