A present for Mr Allende

Entamé esta traducción hai unos díes, porque m'apetecía ensin más, pero siendo güei el cumpleaños d'un de los mios poetes preferíos, bríndo-ylu equí pa si quier la casualidá que'l so xeniu vaiga aculló de les nuestres fronteres. Va por usté, maestru.

THE CLOWN SPEAKS FROM HIS OWN GRAVE

Is there anybody there?

…

Did you know that I used to be a genius?

…

Yes, a genius. Even as a child, at age three, I held three university degrees,

three diplomas in absolutely modern languages

and had written three –totally realistic- novels,

and three minor costumbrist plays.

A genius.

But I knew more, much more.

I perfected our cultural heritage until my own death.

I knew twenty-five different languages,

with their regional and local dialects
Depending on the juridical and administrative area they were found.

I knew how to say, for example, the word love in all those languages,

and also in Caucasian,Vegliot, Sardinian, Lappish and Aztec.

And Spanish, of course.

Besides, I knew a lot about specifically chemical subjects:

the atomic weight of all simple bodies, by heart,

the importance of a small amount of hydrogen in air for subsistence.

I proposed a study of acetylsalicylic and ribonucleic acid subtracting three ions of importance.

I was a genius.

I also drafted an intermediate philosophical system based on two preliminary axioms:

that “I am who I am”

and that “I am who I am not””.

And I demonstrated human materiality

and so I became thing:

I’ve been a ladder, an olive in Jaén, balandru in Llanes,

antimony, a rug, a rosary bead.

I’ve been Cocacola,

a rose of March, a Treasury bond, a picture, an aircraft carrier,

a 135-volt, 40-watt light bulb,

a nine-millimeter parabellum,

a waterfall.

I was a genius

And in spite of it, I worked and collaborated in a variety of trades:

I was everything and anything.

I was a telecommunications engineer with an inclination to lyrical poetry,

a drill operator in the mines of King Solomon,

a member of the literary circle La Tribu de la Hojalata,

the main character in a western film,

an air hostess, a salmon fisherman in Strömpfjord, a prostitute in Place Pigalle
a baker in the Yosi-Kimo commune,

the fifth wife of caliph Alí Ben Yusuf,

a clown.

I used to be a genius.

And now I’m a clown in my grave.

Miguel Allende (here's the original in Asturian Language)