This poem is considered to be one of Hopkin’s «terrible sonnets». In this sonnet he expresses his frustration and discomfort with God. How would you translate this piece full of word-plays and hidden meanings?

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hours we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light's delay.
   With witness I speak this. But where I say
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
To dearest him that lives alas! away.

   I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.
   Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.

This is one of the poems that I found quite amusing to translate into Spanish, it’s actually challenging to keep the rhyming scheme, meaning, and word-plays, all at the same time. Hope you like its complexity, too. Share it and thanks for reading!