ufano de su nueva fortuna, y su opulencia,
a regalar a Alfonso los huertos de Valencia;
o que, tras la aventura que acreditó sus bríos,
pedía la conquista de los inmensos ríos
indianos a la corte, la madre de soldados;
guerreros y adalides que han de tornar, cargados
de plata y oro, a España, en regios galeones,
para la presa cuervos, para la lid leones.
Filósofos nutridos de sopa de convento
contemplan impasibles el amplio firmamento;
y si les llega en sueños, como un rumor distante,
clamor de mercaderes de muelles de Levante,
no acudirán siquiera a preguntar ¿que pasa?
Y ya la guerra ha abierto las puertas de su casa.
Castilla miserable, ayer dominadora,
envuelta en sus harapos desprecia cuanto ignora.
El sol va declinando. De la ciudad lejana
me llega un armonioso tañido de campana
—ya irán a su rosario las enlutadas viejas—.
De entre las peñas salen dos lindas comadrejas;
me miran y se alejan, huyendo, y aparecen
de nuevo, ¡tan curiosas!... Los campos se obscurecen.
Hacia el camino blanco está el mesón abierto
al campo ensombrecido y al pedregal desierto.
On the Banks of the Duero
It was mid July. A handsome day.
Alone up rocky slopes I found my way,
slowly searching out corners of shadow.
At intervals I stopped to dry my brow
and give respite to my heaving chest;
or forcing my step, forward my body pressed
up to the right, exhausted, and I took
a walking stick, a kind of shepherd’s crook,
and scaling hills to sites of soaring birds
of prey, I trod harsh-smelling mountain herbs—
rosemary, sage, and lavender and thyme.
Over the bitter fields fell a sun of flame.
A vulture of broad wings in majestic flight
was crossing solitary through blue light.
I discerned a sharp peak beyond far fields
and a round hill like an embroidered shield
and scarlet slopes over the brownish soil
—the scattered rags of an old coat of mail—
the small bald ranges where the Duero swerves
to realize an archer’s crossbow curve
around Soria—Soria is a barbican
that Castilian towers link to Aragón.
I saw the horizon enclosed by darkened knolls
and rimmed with northern and evergreen oaks,
denuded cliffsides and a humble green
where merino sheep graze and the bull on its knees
broods in the grass; the borders of the river
where clear summer sun lights the green poplars;
and silently some distant travelers,
so minute!—carts, riders and muleteers—
cross the long bridge, and under the arcades
of stone, the Duero waters turn dark shades
of silver.
The Duero crosses the oaken heart
of Iberia and Castilla.
O land apart,
sad and noble high plains, wastelands and stone,
land without plow or streams, the treeless zones,
the crumbling cities, innless roads, and throngs
of stupefied boors without dance or song,
who from their dying hearths still escape free
like your long rivers, Castilla, to the sea!
Miserable Castilla—a master yesterday—
wrapped in her rags, disdaining the unknown way.
Does she hope, sleep or dream? Recall her blood
spilled when she had the fever of the sword?
Everything moves, flows, turns or races by;
the sea and mountain change and the moist eye
of judgment. Gone? Over fields the ghost still soars
of a people placing God above their wars.
A mother, in other days a source of captains,
is now a stepmother of lowly urchins.
Castilla is no longer that generous state
when Myo Cid Rodrigo rode with haughty gait,
proud of his opulence and new commands,
bequeathing Alfonso Valencia’s orchard lands;
or those whose courage gained them famed report,
who begged the mother of soldiers, the royal court,
to conquer the enormous Indian rivers,
whose warriors and leaders came back, deliver-
ing silver and gold to Spain in regal galleons—
for booty, ravens, and for battle, lions.
Philosophers who fed on convent salt,
now impassive, ponder the starry vault,
and if as a far rumble in dreams they hear
merchants shouting from the Levantine piers,
they will not even try to ask their fate.
The war stalking the house has breached the gate.
Miserable Castilla—a master yesterday—
wrapped in her rags, disdaining the unknown way.
The sun is setting. From the distant town
I hear the bells harmoniously resound—
old women in black mourning now intone
their rosary. Two sharp weasels slip between big stones,
spot me, run off, and gaping reappear.
The fields are fading on the somber sphere.
Along the white road is an inn open,
facing the darkened field and desert stone.
Por tierras de España
El hombre de estos campos que incendia los pinares
y su despojo aguarda como botín de guerra,
antaño hubo raído los negros encinares,
talado los robustos robledos de la sierra.
Hoy ve a sus pobres hijos huyendo de sus lares;
la tempestad llevarse los limos de la tierra
por los sagrados ríos hacia los anchos mares;
y en páramos malditos trabaja, sufre y yerra.
Es hijo de una estirpe de rudos caminantes,
pastores que conducen sus hordas de merinos
a Extremadura fértil, rebaños trashumantes
que mancha el polvo y dora el sol de los caminos.
Pequeño, ágil, sufrido, los ojos de hombre astuto,
hundidos, recelosos, movibles; y trazadas
cual arco de ballesta, en el semblante enjuto
de pómulos salientes, las cejas muy pobladas.
Abunda el hombre malo del campo y de la aldea,
capaz de insanos vicios y crímenes bestiales,
que bajo el pardo sayo esconde un alma fea,
esclava de los siete pecados capitales.
Los ojos siempre turbios de envidia o de tristeza,
guarda su presa y llora la que el vecino alcanza;
ni para su infortunio ni goza su riqueza;
le hieren y acongojan fortuna y malandanza.
El numen de estos campos es sanguinario y fiero:
al declinar la tarde, sobre el remoto alcor,
veréis agigantarse la forma de un arquero,
la forma de un inmenso centauro flechador.
Veréis llanuras bélicas y páramos de asceta
—no fue por estos campos el bíblico jardín—:
son tierras para el águila, un trozo de planeta
por donde cruza errante la sombra de Caín.
In Spanish Lands
The man of these lands, burning down the pines,
hoarding their branches like the loot of war,
once dug the black oaks out of tangled vines
and felled rough oaks high on the mountain floor.
Today his son in poverty has fled
as storms have stripped the nutrients from the soil
and holy rivers washed t
hem from their bed
down to broad seas. On cursed wastelands he toils,
suffers and roams, a son of those who walk
the road, shepherds who drive their hordes of sheep
to rich Extremadura, nomadic flocks
dust-stained, gilded by sunlight of the steppes.
He’s short, limber, suffering; the jealous eye
of a quick cunning man, and his eyebrows,
curving like a crossbow over his dry
jutting cheekbones, shape his thick hairy frown.
In field and village these bad men abound.
They’re good at insane vice and bestial crime.
Under brown capes they hide an ugly soul.
Slaves of the seven deadly sins, their time
on earth is eyes blurred with envy and grief;
happy when hanging on, furious if a neighbor
makes it. Failure wounds them, with no relief
from pain. No fortune in their filthy labor.
The numen of these fields is bloody and proud,
and when the day splinters on a far hill
you’ll see a giant emerging from a cloud,
a centaur with his arrow poised to kill.
You’ll see these warring fields and desert granite
—no Bible garden ever graced this plain—
a land made for the eagle, a piece of planet
over which floats the roaming shade of Cain.
El hospicio
Es el hospicio, el viejo hospicio provinciano,
el caserón ruinoso de ennegrecidas tejas
en donde los vencejos anidan en verano
y graznan en las noches de invierno las cornejas.
Con su frontón al Norte, entre los dos torreones
de antigua fortaleza, el sórdido edificio
de grietados muros y sucios paredones,
es un rincón de sombra eterna. ¡El viejo hospicio!
Mientras el sol de enero su débil luz envía,
su triste luz velada sobre los campos yermos,
a un ventanuco asoman, al declinar el día,
algunos rostros pálidos, atónitos y enfermos,
a contemplar los montes azules de la sierra;
o, de los cielos blancos, como sobre una fosa,
caer la blanca nieve sobre la fría tierra,
¡sobre la tierra fría la nieve silenciosa!...
“The poorhouse”
The poorhouse, the old provincial poorhouse,
the great tumbledown home of blackened tiles,
where in the summer martins make their nest
and crows are cawing through the winter nights.
Its gable facing north, the old fortress falls
between two turrets, the sordid building groans
with crackled rooms and grimy outer walls,
a corner of eternal shade. Old poorhouse!
While January sun sends out its feeble rays,
a sad cloudy light over wasted fields,
as day evaporates, some pallid faces
gape from a tiny window, dazed and sick,
to contemplate the blue hills of the range
or the white snow dropping on the cold soil
from the white heavens as onto a grave,
upon the frozen earth the silent snow!
“Eres tú, Guadarrama, viejo amigo”
¿Eres tú, Guadarrama, viejo amigo,
la sierra gris y blanca,
la sierra de mis tardes madrileñas
que yo veía en el azul pintada?
Por tus barrancos hondos
y por tus cumbres agrias,
mil Guadarramas y mil soles vienen,
cabalgando conmigo, a tus entrañas.
Camino de Balsaín, 1911
“Guadarrama, is it you, old friend?”
Guadarrama, is it you, old friend,
the sierra gray and white,
the mountains of my Madrid afternoons
when I saw you painted against the blue.
Up through your deep ravines
and through your bitter peaks,
a thousand Guadarramas and a thousand suns
canter with me into your body.
Balsain Road, 1911
En abril, las aguas mil
Son de abril las aguas mil.
Sopla el viento achubascado,
y entre nublado y nublado
hay trozos de cielo añil.
Agua y sol. El iris brilla.
En una nube lejana,
zigzaguea
una centella amarilla.
La lluvia da en la ventana
y el cristal repiquetea.
A través de la neblina
que forma la lluvia fina,
se divisa un prado verde,
y un encinar se esfumina,
y una sierra gris se pierde.
Los hilos del aguacero
sesgan las nacientes frondas,
y agitan las turbias ondas
en el remanso del Duero.
Lloviendo está en los habares
y en las pardas sementeras;
hay sol en los encinares,
charcos por las carreteras.
Lluvia y sol. Ya se oscurece
el campo, ya se ilumina;
allí un cerro desparece,
allá surge una colina.
Ya son claros, ya sombríos
los dispersos caseríos,
los lejanos torreones.
Hacia la sierra plomiza
van rodando en pelotones
nubes de guata y ceniza.
“The thousand waters of April”
The thousand waters of April.
The wind blows in squalls,
and between clouds and clouds
are patches of indigo sky.
Water and sun. The rainbow gleams.
In a remote cloud
zigzags
a thread of yellow lightning.
The rain batters the window
and the panes chime.
In the midst of the haze
shaped by the fine drizzle,
a green meadow emerges
and an oak forest blurs
and a mountain ridge is lost.
The threads of a downpour
slant into newborn fronds
and stir up muddy waves
in the backwater of the Duero.
It is raining on the bean fields
and on the brown seeded lands.
There is sun on the oak groves,
puddles along the roadways.
Rain and sun. A darkening
of fields, now they brighten.
Here a slope disappears,
there a hill breaks into light.
Now shining, now somber
the scattered hamlets,
the far castle towers.
Over the leaden earth,
rolling as huge globes,
go clouds of cotton and ash.
Un loco
Es una tarde mustia y desabrida
de un otoño sin frutos, en la tierra
estéril y raída
donde la sombra de un centauro yerra.
Por un camino en la árida llanura,
entre álamos marchitos,
a solas con su sombra y su locura
va el loco, hablando a gritos.
Lejos se ven sombríos estepares,
colinas con malezas y cambrones,
y ruinas de viejos encinares,
coronando los agrios serrijones.
El loco vocifera
a solas con su sombra y su quimera.
Es horrible y grotesta su figura;
flaco, sucio, maltrecho y mal rapado,
ojos de calentura
iluminan su rostro demacrado.
Huye de la ciudad... Pobres maldades,
misérrimas virtudes y quehaceres
de chubs aburridos, y ruindades
de ociosos mercaderes.
Por los campos de Dios e
l loco avanza.
Tras la tierra esquelética y sequiza
—rojo de herrumbre y pardo de ceniza—
hay un sueño de lirio en lontananza.
Huye de la ciudad. ¡El tedio urbano!
—¡carne triste y espíritu villano!—.
No fue por una trágica amargura
esta alma errante desgajada y rota;
purga un pecado ajeno: la cordura,
la terrible cordura del idiota.
A Madman
It is a murky and disturbing afternoon
of a fruitless autumn on the sterile
and worn-out land
where the shadow of a centaur wanders.
Along the road of the arid plain,
amid shrunken poplars,
alone with his madness and shadows
goes the madman, talking in shouts.
Far off the darkening steppes appear,
hills of underbrush and bramble,
and ruins of the old oaks
that crown the raw sierra summits.
The madman screams his head off,
alone with his shadow and his monsters.
His face is horrible and grotesque,
skinny, filthy, battered and unshaven;
boiling eyes
fire his wasted face.
He flees the city and its wretched evils
and awful virtues, the jobs
of bored pimps and the stinginess
of lazy merchants.
Through the fields of God the madman walks.
Across the dry skeleton of earth
—red with iron rust and brown with ash—
Border of a Dream: Selected Poems of Antonio Machado (Spanish Edition) Page 12
