on the Alvargonzález hearth;
the older tries to light it
but the flame sputters out.
“Father, the fire won’t take,
the wood is soaking wet.”
His brother comes to help.
He scatters chips and branches
over the logs of oak,
but the embers die down.
The youngest comes in.
Under the black chimney
in the kitchen, he starts a flame
lighting the whole house.
4
Then Alvargonzález lifts
his young son in his arms
and seats him on his knees:
“Your hands made the fire.
Though you were born last,
in my love you are first.”
The elder sons sneak out
through the corners of dream.
Between the two fugitives
glitters an iron hatchet.
That Evening
1
Over the naked fields
the full moon looms
stained with purplish red,
an enormous globe.
The sons of Alvargonzález
are walking silently
and see their father asleep
next to the bright spring.
2
The father’s face
is creased by a scowl between
his eyebrows: a dark gash
like the imprint of an ax.
He’s dreaming of his sons,
that his sons have raised knives,
and when he wakes he sees
what he dreamt is right.
3
Beside the bright spring
the father lies dead.
He has four stab wounds
between his chest and ribs;
his blood is pouring out;
a hatchet blow on his neck.
The bright running water
tells the crime of the fields
while the two murderers flee
into the beechwood grove.
They carry the body down
to Laguna Negra below
the Duero River. Behind them
they leave a bloody trail.
In the bottomless lake
that surrenders no secrets,
they tie a stone to his feet,
bequeathing him a grave.
4
The Alvargonzález blanket
is found next to the spring,
and on the way to the beeches
a rivulet of blood is seen.
No one from the village dares
to come near the pool,
and to dredge the lake is futile
since the lake cannot be dredged.
A peddler who comes
wandering through these lands
is tried in Dauria. The prisoner
dies by the horrible garrote.
5
After a few months
the mother dies of sorrow.
Those who find her dead
say that her stiffened hands
on her face clawed her face,
which lay hidden in them.
6
The sons of Alvargonzález
now own the fold and orchard,
the fields of wheat and rye
and meadows of fine grass,
the hives in the old elm
split by the lightning,
two ox teams for plowing,
a mastiff and a thousand sheep.
Other Days
1
Brambles are blossoming
and cherry trees whiten
and the gold bees suck
pollen for their hives,
and in their nests that crown
the church towers glow
the storks’ spindly pothooks.
The elms along the road
and the poplars on the banks
of deep rivers turn green,
looking for father Duero.
The firmament is blue,
the snowless mountains violet.
The land of Alvargonzález
overflows with richness.
He who worked it is dead
but earth doesn’t cover him.
2
Handsome land of Spain,
parched, fine and warlike
Castilla, of the long rivers,
with its fist of sierras
between Soria and Burgos,
with fortified ramparts
like huge helmets festooned
with Urbión,26 the final crest.
3
The sons of Alvargonzález
are riding dark mules together
along a steep path up
under the pines of Vinuesa
to reach the highway
from Salduero to Covaleda.
They’re going to buy cattle
and drive them to their village
and through the pine forest
they begin the day journey.
They climb above the Duero,
leaving behind the bridge
with stone arches and the idle
opulent house of the migrants.
The river dreams deep
in the valley, and their beasts’
iron shoes batter the rocks.
On the other bank of the Duero
a mournful voice is singing:
“The land of Alvargonzález
overflows with riches,
and he who worked the land
cannot sleep below the earth.”
4
Coming upon a spot
where the pinewood thickens,
the brother leading the way
spurs his dark mule, screaming,
—Goddamit, get going!
We’ve got miles and miles
before the night traps us.
The two sons of these fields
made of gorges and bitterness
remember an afternoon,
and quake in the mountain night.
In the densest part of the forest
again they hear the voices:
“The land of Alvargonzález
overflows with riches,
and he who worked the land
cannot sleep below the earth.”
5
The road beyond Salduero
follows a thread of water.
On both banks of the river
the pine trees grow and soar,
and great rocks loom blurry
while the low valley narrows.
Strong pines of the forest
with gigantic spreading tops
and tribes of naked roots
are clinging to the boulders.
Some of their trunks are silver,
their needles turning blue:
the young ones. The old ones
covered with leprous toadstools,
moss and gray lichen
gnaw their heavy bark.
The valley erased below them
and nothing on either side,
luan the elder, says, “Brother,
if Bias Antonio’s cattle
are grazing on Urbión,
we have a long road to go.”
“When we leave the mountain,
we can take a shortcut
by going by Laguna Negra
and cutting down to the port
from Santa Inés to Vinuesa.”
“Bad lands and worse road.
I swear to you, I don’t want
to see them again! Let’s do
our business in Covaleda,
stay the night, leave at daybreak
and ride back to the village
through the valley. Sometimes
the shortcut is the long way.”
By the river the brothers ride,
pondering how the centenary
forest hugely expands
with every step they take,
how the mountain’s rocky slope
closes down the horizon,
and the tumbling waters
seem to sing or recount:
“The land of Alvargonzález
overflows with riches,
and he who worked the land
cannot sleep below the earth.”
Punishment
1
Although greed has ready
a sheepfold for the sheep,
barns to store the wheat,
bags to hold the coins,
it has claws but owns no hands
skilled in working the soil.
So a year of abundance
succumbs to a year of poverty.
2
In the seeded fields grow
poppies soaked with blood.
The spikes and shoots of wheat
and oats are a rotting blight
The late frost kills
the fruit blossoms in the orchard,
and an evil curse falls
on sheep dying of disease.
God curses the two Alvagonzálezes
struggling in their lands,
and a year of poverty
precedes long years of misery.
3
It is a winter evening.
The snow falls in whirwinds.
The Alvargonzáleses watch
a fire which is almost out.
Both their minds are roped
to the same recollection
and their eyes are locked,
staring at the dying ashes
in the ancient hearth. They have
neither firewood nor sleep.
Night is a long deadening cold.
A smoking candle flame
is blackening the wall.
Wind shakes the flame and blows
it into a reddish gleam
around the two brooding heads
of the murderers.
The elder Alvargonzález
emitting a hoarse sigh
breaks the silence. He exclaims,
“Brother, we were evil!”
The wind batters the door,
shaking it on its hinges,
and echoing in the chimney
a long hollow groan.
Then a return of silence
and irregularly the wick
of the candle sputters
in the hard frozen air.
The younger says, “Brother,
let’s forget the old man!”
The Traveler
1
It is a winter evening.
Wind lashes the branches
of the poplars, and snow
settles on the white earth.
Under the snowfall a man
is riding on the road;
he is hooded up to his eyes,
enveloped in a black cape.
Entering the village he looks
for the Alvargonzález house
and stops before the door,
without dismounting. He knocks.
2
The two brothers hear
a pounding on the door
and an animal whose hoofs
are clapping the stones.
Both of them raise their eyes
bloated with terror and surprise.
“Who is it? Answer!” they shout.
“Miguel!” A sound from outside;
it is the voice of the traveler
who went to distant lands.
3
The big gate opens and in
rides a gentleman on horseback.
He leaps down, touching earth.
He is all covered with snow.
Once in his brothers’ arms,
he weeps a while in silence.
Then gives his horse to one,
to the other his cape and hat,
and in the peasant mansion
he looks for comforting fire.
4
The youngest of the brothers,
a boy and adventurer
who went beyond the seas,
is home as a rich emigrant.
He is wearing a black suit
made of the finest velvet,
and circling his waist
a broad belt of leather.
A heavy watch chain of gold
is buckled across his chest.
He is a tall robust man
whose eyes are large and black
and filled with melancholy.
His complexion brownish,
and over his forehead falls
a curling tangle of locks.
He is the son of a royal father
who was a plain working farmer
to whom good fortune came
with love, power and money.
Of the three Alvargonzáleses
Miguel is the handsomest.
The oldest one’s face is spoiled
with a dominating frown
below a paltry forehead;
the second’s disturbed eyes,
unable to focus straight
ahead, are ferocious and wild.
5
The three brothers contemplate
the sad home in quietude,
and as the night closes in
the cold and wind stiffen.
“Brothers, don’t you have wood?”
asks Miguel. “We have nothing,”
the elder replies.
A man
miraculously opens up
the bulky closed door
with its double bar of iron.
The man who comes inside
wears the dead father’s face.
A halo of golden light
caresses his white locks.
He carries wood on his shoulder
and grasps an iron hatchet.
The Returned Emigrant
1
Out of those cursed acres,
Miguel buys a share
from his brothers. He brings
abundance from America,
and even in bad land, gold
shines better when not buried.
Better in hands of the poor
than concealed in a clay jar.
He starts to work the earth
with faith and emigrant force
while the others look after
their portions of soil and cattle.
And now the fruitful summer
decorates Miguel’s fields
with towering ears of wheat
pregnant with yellow grain,
and soon from village to village
the miracle is recounted,
and the murderers suffer
a curse invading their fields.
Soon the people sing verses
narrating the earlier crime:
“By the border of the spring
they killed him.
What an evil death they gave him,
the evil sons!
In the bottomless pool,
they threw the dead father,
and he who worked the land
cannot sleep below the earth.”
2
Miguel with two greyhounds
and armed with his shotgun,
goes toward the blue mountains
on a serene afternoon.
He is walking amid the green
poplars along the highway
and hears a voice singing:
“He has no grave in the earth.
Amid the valley pine trees
of Revinuesa
they carted their dead father
out to Laguna Negra.”
The House
1
The house of Alvargonzález
is an old humble mansion
with four narrow windows,
a hundred yards from the village
set between two elm trees,
two giant sentinels
who furnish shade in summer
and in autumn dry leaves.
&n
bsp; It is a house of farmers,
of people rich but peasants,
where the smoking fireplace
with its seats made of stone
is easily seen from outside,
the door open to the fields.
Set down amid the embers
in the fireplace are two
bubbling stewpots of clay
for nourishing the two families.
On the right, the yard
and the corral; on the left,
the orchard and beehives.
In the back, a worn staircase
leading up to the rooms
divided in sleeping quarters.
The Alvargonzáleses live
in them with their women.
Neither of these couples
have brought sons into the world
and so the paternal house
confers on them ample space.
In one room with a view
onto the luminous orchard,
are a table with thick oak boards
and two chairs of cowhide.
Hanging from the wall
a black abacus with big beads
and some old rusty spurs
lying on a wooden chest.
There is a forgotten room
where Miguel is living now.
It was here where his parents
saw the orchard in spring
buzzing with flowers, a sky
in blue May with a stork
(when roses open up
and brambles turn white)
instructing its fledglings
to use their slow wings to fly.
And on a summer night
when heat excluded sleep,
from the open window they heard
an invisible nightingale singing.
There Alvargonzález,
with pride in his orchards
and love for his new family,
had dreams of grandeur.
He saw the laughing figure
of his first son in the arms
of his mother, the face
radiant under the yellow sun,
and then the boy’s small greedy
hands reached for the red
mazzard berries and the cherries.
That autumn evening
Border of a Dream: Selected Poems of Antonio Machado (Spanish Edition) Page 16
