The Spanish Language and a Note on Translation

I love the sound of the language . . . It's so much more musical, dreamy, like waves washing over me. It doesn't have the urgency of English--the staccato, the sense of --I have to say it fast and now. I have to rush, or I might miss my life, which is a feeling I carry with me most of my days . . .

It's that feeling Ann Sexton described as having a rat inside her.

I am reminded of the translations of Whitman I once read --into Spanish--
How the word, urge, lost all its intensity, its passion, when written as urgencio or impulso.

"Urge and urge and urge,
always the procreant urge of the world,"

Neruda translated this as:

"Impulso, impulso, impulso,
siempre el procreador impulso del mundo."

Reading that, I can't help laughing. Impulso del mundo. It sounds like some cumbersome sea creature, washing ashore, slowly but surely.