was gold, pleasing, and good,
and he thought it possible
to live happy on the earth.
Now, the peasants sing verses
drifting from village to village,
“House of Alvargonzález,
bad days are waiting for you.
House of the murderers,
Let no one call at your door.”
2
It is an autumn afternoon.
In the golden poplar grove
there are no more nightingales;
the cicada is numb.
The last few swallows
who have not begun to migrate
will die, and the storks
in their nest of broom twigs
on bell towers and spires
have fled.
On the farmhouse roof
the wind has left a scattering
of elm leaves torn from the branches,
yet in the church courtyard
three round acacia trees
still have green leafage.
The horse chestnuts, protected
in their husks, one by one
break loose, drop on the ground.
The rose tree again is dropping
seed, and the wide meadows
glitter in the season’s rays.
On hillsides and hollows,
on banks and on clearings,
bits of grass and new green herbs
that summer hasn’t scorched
flap about. Barren summits
and bald knolls and bluffs
wear the crown of sinking
globes of metallic clouds.
On the floor of pine forests,
between withered brambles
and the yellowish bracken
small swollen streams race
to fatten the master river
swirling over rocks and ravines.
The plowed earth is colored
with lead and silver blue,
with stains of red iron rust
enveloped in violet light.
O fields of Alvargonzález
tracing the heart of Spain,
poor lands, sorrowful lands,
so sad they have a soul!
Wasteland. The wolf crosses,
howling under the bright moon,
as it goes from wood to wood,
circled by scrubland and gnawed cliffs
where the vultures pick clean
the remnants of shiny white bones.
The poor solitary fields
have no highway nor inns,
O poor doomed fields,
the poor fields of my country!
Earth
1
One morning in autumn
when the land is being plowed,
Juan and Miguel harness
the farm’s two teams of oxen.
Martín stays in the orchard,
pulling out the bad weeds.
2
One morning in autumn
when the fields are being plowed,
Juan slowly moves ahead
with the yoked oxen up
and over a hill to the skyline
holding morning in its depths.
Thistles, burdocks and thorns,
wild oats and darnel
spread through the cursed land,
resisting hoe and sickle.
The curved oak plow,
drowned in weeds, struggles deep
against the soil in vain. It seems
as soon as it splits the tangle
to dig a furrow ahead, the sod
closes up again behind.
“When a murderer plows,
his labor will be heavy.
Before each furrow in the land
he’ll cut a wrinkle on his face.”
3
Martín is in the orchard,
digging. He stops and leans
on his hoe a moment,
paralyzed as cold sweat
drowns his face.
In the east
the full moon stained
with a purple haze
glows behind the garden
fence.
Martín’s blood freezes
in horror. The hoe
that sank into the earth
is dyed with blood.
4
In the land where he was born
the emigrant knows how to prosper.
He weds a young woman
who is rich and beautiful.
The Alvargonzález hacienda
belongs to him. His brothers
sold all of it: farmhouse,
orchard, beehives and fields.
The Murderers
1
Juan and Martín, the elder
Alvargonzález brothers
go on a grim journey
at dawn to the upper Duero.
The morning star
is burning in high blue.
The white and dense mist
of the valleys and ravines
is gradually dyed pink,
and some leaden clouds
by Urbión where the Duero starts
to place a turban on the peak.
They come near the spring.
The water is racing bright,
sounding as if it were telling
an old story, a tale told
a thousand times, and told
a thousand times again:
Water racing in the fields
says in its monotony:
“I know the crime. A crime
beside the water? A life.”
As the two brothers near,
the pristine water relates:
“At the edge of the spring
Alvargonzález was sleeping.”
2
“Last night, when I got back
to the house,” Juan tells
his brother, “under the moon
I saw a miracle in the orchard.
Far off, among the rose trees
I made out a man leaning
toward the earth. His silver hoe
was glistening in his hand.
Then he stood up and turned
his face, took a few steps
in the garden, not looking
at me, and soon I saw him
hunched over the earth again.
His hair was all white.
The light was glowing full,
the orchard was a miracle.”
3
They come down from the pass
of Santa Inés, the afternoon
half gone, a filthy evening
in November, cold and dull.
Toward Laguna Negra
they are walking in silence.
4
When dusk comes on
through the venerable beeches
and centenary pines,
the red sun filters away.
There is a patch of woods
and jutting cliffsides:
Here are yawning mouths
or monsters with iron claws;
here, a shapeless hunchback,
there, a grotesque belly.
Steel snouts of wild beasts
and cracked false teeth,
rocks and rocks, trunks
and trunks, branches and branches.
In the depth of the canyon
night, terror and water.
5
A wolf emerges, its eyes
shining like two hot embers.
It is night, a rainy,
dark and enveloping night.
The two brothers want
to go back. The forest howls.
A hundred wild beasts in
the forest burn at their backs
6
The two murderers
reach Laguna Negra,
transparent and still water,
an enormous wall of stone
where the vultures nest
and echo sleeps and circles
;
bright water where the eagles
of the sierra drink,
where the wild mountain boar,
stag and doe drink together.
Pure and silent water
copies eternal things.
The indifferent water holds
the stars in its heart.
Father! they scream. Down
to the bottom of the serene pool
they plunge, and the echo father!
booms from boulder to boulder.
26 A high peak northwest of Soria. The Duero River rises toward it.
A un olmo seco
Al olmo viejo, hendido por el rayo
y en su mitad podrido,
con las lluvias de abril y el sol de mayo,
algunas hojas verdes le han salido.
¡El olmo centenario en la colina
que lame el Duero! Un musgo amarillento
le mancha la corteza blanquecina
al tronco carcomido y polvoriento.
No será, cual los álamos cantores
que guardan el camino y la ribera,
habitado de pardos ruiseñores.
Ejército de hormigas en hilera
va trepando por él, y en sus entrañas
urden sus telas grises las arañas.
Antes que te derribe, olmo del Duero,
con su hacha el leñador, y el carpintero
te convierta en melena de campana,
lanza de carro o yugo de carreta;
antes que rojo en el hogar, mañana,
ardas de alguna mísera caseta,
al borde de un camino;
antes que te descuaje un torbellino
y tronche el soplo de las sierras blancas;
antes que el río hasta la mar te empuje
por valles y barrancas,
olmo, quiero anotar en mi cartera
la gracia de tu rama verdecida.
Mi corazón espera
también, hacia la luz y hacia la vida,
otro milagro de la primavera.
Soria, 1912
To a Dry Elm
On the old elm split in two by a ray
of lightning and half rotted,
with the rains of April and the sun of May
a few green leaves have sprouted.
The elm one hundred years on the hill
lapped by the Duero! A yellowish musk
has stained the whitish bark until
its trunk is a worm-eaten bulk of dust.
Unlike the canticling poplars that trail
and guard the road and riverbank,
it will not nest the tawny nightingales.
A division of ants files along its flank,
and climbs all over it, and spiders spread
into its entrails, dropping their gray webs.
Elm tree by the Duero, before you fall
under the woodman’s ax, and the carpenter’s awl
and plane convert you into yokes or beams
to stay a bell in place, or cut
you into carts; before you are a red gleam
of lumber burning in a wretched hut
at the edge of a road;
before the mountain whirlwinds explode
under your roots, and white sierra gales
blast you; before the river pulls you through valley
and gorges to the sea,
elm, in my copybook I want to note
the grace of your greening leaf.
My heart is waiting
also—before light and before life—
another miracle of spring.
Soria, 1912
Caminos
De la ciudad moruna
tras las murallas viejas,
yo contemplo la tarde silenciosa,
a solas con mi sombra y con mi pena.
El río va corriendo,
entre sombrías huertas
y grises olivares,
por los alegres campos de Baeza.
Tienen las vides pámpanos dorados
sobre las rojas cepas.
Guadalquivir, como un alfanje roto
y disperso, reluce y espejea.
Lejos, los montes duermen
envueltos en la niebla,
niebla de otoño, maternal; descansan
las rudas moles de su ser de piedra
en esta tibia tarde de noviembre,
tarde piadosa, cárdena y violeta.
El viento ha sacudido
los mustios olmos de la carretera,
levantando en rosados torbellinos
el polvo de la tierra.
La luna está subiendo
amoratada, jadeante y llena.
Los caminitos blancos
se cruzan y se alejan,
buscando los dispersos caseríos
del valle y de la sierra.
Caminos de los campos...
¡Ay, ya, no puedo caminar con ella!
Noviembre 1913
Roads
From this Moorish city
behind the old walls,
I contemplate the silent afternoon
alone with my shadow and with my pain.
The river is flowing
between shady orchards
and gray olive groves
through the cheerful fields of Baeza.
The grapevines have gold tendrils
over their red stalks.
Guadalquivir, like a cutlass broken
and scattered, glitters and mirrors.
Far off, the mountains sleep
enveloped in haze,
maternal autumn haze, delicate aromatic
rue plants rest from their being in stone
on this warm November afternoon,
an afternoon pious, dark purple and violet.
The wind has shaken
the musty elms along the highway,
raising pink whirlwinds
of dust over the earth.
The moon is rising
livid, breathless and full.
Small white roads
cross each other and disappear,
seeking out a chance farmhouse
in the valley and upon the sierra.
Roads of the fields...
Oh, I can no longer walk with her!
November 1913
“Señor, ya me arrancaste lo que yo más quería”
Señor, ya me arrancaste lo que yo más quería.
Oye otra vez, Dios mío, mi corazón clamar.
Tu voluntad se hizo, Señor, contra la mía.
Señor, ya estamos solos mi corazón y el mar.
“Lord, now what I loved most you tore from me”
Lord, now what I loved most you tore from me.
God, hear again my heart cry out alone.
Your will was done, my Lord, against my own.
Lord, now we are alone, my heart and sea.
“Dice la esperanza: un día”
Dice la esperanza: un día
la verás, si bien esperas,
dice la desesperanza:
sólo tu amargura es ella.
Late, corazón... No todo
se lo ha tragado la tierra.
“Hope says”
Hope says: One day
you will see her, if you really wait.
Despair says:
She is only your bitterness.
Beat, heart. Not everything
is swallowed by the earth.
“Allá, en las tierras altas”
Allá, en las tierras altas,
por donde traza el Duero
su curva de ballesta
en torno a Soria, entre plomizos cerros
y manchas de raídos encinares,
mi corazón está vagando, en sueños...
¿No ves, Leonor, los álamos del río
con sus ramajes yertos?
Mira el Moncayo azul y blanco; dame
tu mano y paseemos.
Por estos campos de la tierra mía,
bordados de olivares polv
orientos,
voy caminando solo,
triste, cansado, pensativo y viejo.
“There in the highlands”
There in the highlands
where the Duero traces
its crossbow curve
around Soria, among the leaden ridges
and stains of wasted live oaks,
my heart is vagabonding in daydreams...
Leonor, do you see the river poplars
with their firm branches?
Look at the Moncayo blue and white. Give me
your hand and let us stroll.
Through these fields of my countryside,
embroidered with dusty olive groves,
I go walking alone,
sad, tired, pensive, old.
“Soñé que tú me llevabas”
Soñé que tú me llevabas
por una blanca vereda,
en medio del campo verde,
hacia el azul de las sierras,
hacia los montes azules,
una mañana serena.
Sentí tu mano en la mía,
tu mano de compañera,
tu voz de niña en mi oído
como una campana nueva,
como una campana virgen
de un alba de primavera.
¡Eran tu voz y tu mano,
en sueños, tan verdaderas!...
Vive, esperanza, ¡quién sabe
lo que se traga la tierra!
“I dreamt you were guiding me”
I dreamt you were guiding me
down a white footpath
in the middle of the green meadow
toward the blue of the sierras,
Border of a Dream: Selected Poems of Antonio Machado (Spanish Edition) Page 17
