a mountain fragrance follows him; grass mowed
across the pleasant fields is fiery hay.
The pilgrim on his lengthy journey reined
his heart in check. He found that it was best
for iron lines to wait and be contained
until the soul could ripen in his chest.
All this I dreamt: a homicidal time
floating us to our death or drifting (and
in vain) was just the peak of Adam’s dream.
I saw a man who in his naked hand
revealed the coals of life, a constant flash
of Heraclitean fire, and yet no ash.
Love and the Sierra
He galloped over harsh sierra ground
one afternoon amid the ashen rock.
The tempest’s leaden ball was heard rebound
mountain to mountain echoing with shock.
Suddenly, amid the glazing radiance
of burning lightning bolts, below high pines
his horse reared up next to a precipice.
He swerved back to the path, seizing the reins.
He looked. The sundered cloud came into view,
and in the rift the sharpened summits grew
of farther sierra peaks hanging above,
blazing. It seemed to be lightning of stone.
And did he see God’s face? He saw his love.
He screamed: To die in these cold hills alone!
Pío Baroja46
In London or Madrid, Geneva or Rome
he is the ingenuous passerby surprised,
a taedium vitae in varied language foam,
in sundry masks but of one face comprised.
He strolls about, his hands folded behind
him, and as he goes by he tilts toward
the earth. All in his path are a new find,
whether on high or ruinous regard.
The nineteenth century offered—very late—
the great Baroja embers of flaming coal,
and in the twentieth, world war’s at his gate,
covering all of his red-haired face with ash.
From the romantic rose, lost in the snow,
he’s seen the last petal linger and crash.
Azorín47
The red meadow made of fiery wheat,
the flowery beanfield floating with fragrance,
cups of Manchegan saffron were his treat.
He didn’t miss the fine lily of France.
Whose is that double look of candor and
boredom, the quivering voice and honest sign,
a cold man, with nobility of mein,
who counters with the fervor of his hand?
Don’t place him in the end under the weight
of stormy summits or unfriendly wood,
but in a transparent morning’s plain light
where the far mountain wears a foaming hood
of stone near a small village on the plain
and the sharp tower against the blue of Spain!
To Emiliano Barral, Sculptor
Your chisel chopped me
out of a roseate stone
holding a cold dawn
eternally spellbound.
And the sour melancholy
of dreamed-about grandeur
so Spanish (a fantasy
dressing up my laziness)
emerged from that rock
that is my mirror. The face
came line by line, plane by plane,
my mouth of little thirst,
and under the arc of a hazy brow
two eyes with a far-off gaze
that I wish were mine
as they are in your sculpture:
eyes dug out of hard stone,
in stone, so as not to see.
Madrid, 1922
Solitudes to a Master
1
Not a professor of energy,
Francisco de Icaza,
but of melancholy.
2
From his old race
he keeps the brief word
and deep phrase.
3
Like the olive grove,
he gives a lot of fruit
and scant shadow.
4
In his clear poem
he sings and meditates,
but no shout or frown.
5
And in perfect rhyme
—at the edge of the water
the double black poplar—.
6
His singing carries
pools of water
that look still
and are not,
but in no hurry
to go to the sea.
7
His songs have
the smell and zip
of old loves.
From Indian sun
a ripeness of fruit
and rich taste.
8
Francisco de Icaza,
from Spain of old
to the New España,
from a dawn-gold coin
you shape your lyre
and viceroy’s profile.
Dreams in Dialogue
1
How suddenly her face on the plateau
appears to me! And then my word evokes
green meadows and the arid plains below,
the flowering blackberries and ashen rocks.
Obedient to my memory, the black oak
bursts on the hill, the poplars then define
the river, and the shepherd climbs the cloak
of knolls while a town balcony shines: mine,
ours. Can you see? Remote, toward Aragón,
the sierra of Moncayo, white and rose.
Look at the bonfire of that cloud, and far
shining against the blue, my wife, a star.
Santana hill, beyond the Duero, shows,
turning violet in soundless afternoon.
2
You ask me why my heart flies from the coast
back to Castilla, to towering raw terrains,
why, near the sea, in fertile fields, I most
long to be back on high and barren plains.
No one chooses his love. It was my fate
that one day chose to send me to gray hills
where falling snows freeze and obliterate
the shadows of dead oaks—now winter still.
Out of that spur of Spain, rocky and high,
I bring you now, blooming Guadalquivir,
a sprig of rosemary, a pungent thorn.
My heart is living, yes, where it was born,
but not to life—to love, the Duero near,
the whitewashed wall and cypress in the sky!
3
Lady, the embers of a shattered dusk,
its storm clouds a monotony of brown,
have quickly painted rocks of ashen rust
on a far hill with blazings of the dawn.
It is a dawn congealed on frozen rock
that overwhelms the traveler with awe
and dread—more than a furious lion stalk-
ing the bright day, or great bears in the claw
of mountains. Seized by flaming love, with burns
and turbulence of dreams of hope and fright,
I’m walking toward the sea, oblivion,
and not like those huge boulders toward the night
as the dark somber planet turns and turns.
Don’t try to call them back. I must go on.
4
O solitude and now my one companion!
O muse of wonder offering the word—
I never asked for—to my voice! A question:
Whom am I talking to? And am I heard?
Abstracted from the noisy masquerade,
I turn my sadness, punctured by no friend,
to you, my lady of the veiled face, in shade,
who when you talk to me are always veiled.
Today I think: who I am I
don’t care;
it’s not my grave enigma when I stare
into my inner mirror, but the mystery
of your warm loving voice. Now clear the glare
and show your face to me. I want to see
your eyes made out of diamonds fixed on me.
From My Notebook
1
Not marble hard and enduring,
not music or painting,
but the word in time.
2
Song and story are poetry.
A live story is sung
told by its melody.
3
The soul creates its banks,
mountains of ash and lead,
small copses of spring.
4
All imagery
not springing from the river
is cheap jewelry.
5
Choose poor rhyme,
undefined assonance.
When the song tells nothing
maybe the rhyme is lame.
6
Free verse, free verse.
Better to be free of verse
when it enslaves.
7
Rhymes verbal and weak
and temporal are strong.
Adjective and noun
are still pools of clear water,
are accidents of a verb
in the lyric grammar
of today that will be tomorrow,
of yesterday that is still.
45 These sonnets under one title are sometimes related, but they are not a sequence and are to be taken as separate sonnets.
46 Spanish novelist (1872–1956).
47 Pseudonym of Spanish essayist and novelist José Martínez Ruiz (1873–1967), known for his descriptions of Castilian towns and landscapes.
Sonetos
1
Tuvo mi corazón, encrucijada
de cien caminos, todos pasajeros,
un gentío sin cita ni posada,
como en andén ruidoso de viajeros.
Hizo a los cuatro vientos su jornada,
disperso el corazón por cien senderos
de llana tierra o piedra aborrascada,
y a la suerte, en el mar, de cien veleros.
Hoy, enjambre que torna a su colmena
cuando el bando de cuervos enronquece
en busca de su peña denegrida,
vuelve mi corazón a su faena,
con néctares del campo que florece
y el luto de la tarde desabrida.
2
Verás la maravilla del camino,
camino de soñada Compostela
—¡oh monte lila y flavo!—, peregrino,
en un llano, entre chopos de candela.
Otoño con dos ríos ha dorado
el cerco del gigante centinela
de piedra y luz, prodigio torreado
que en el azul sin mancha se modela.
Verás en la llanura una jauría
de agudos galgos y un señor de caza,
cabalgando a lejana serranía,
vano fantasma de una vieja raza.
Debes entrar cuando en la tarde fría
brille un balcón de la desierta plaza.
3
¿Empañé tu memoria? ¡Cuántas veces!
La vida baja como un ancho río,
y cuando lleva al mar alto navío
va con cieno verdoso y turbias heces.
Y más si hubo tormenta en sus orillas,
y él arrastra el botín de la tormenta,
si en su cielo la nube cenicienta
se incendió de centellas amarillas.
Pero aunque fluya hacia la mar ignota,
es la vida también agua de fuente
que de claro venero, gota a gota,
o ruidoso penacho de torrente,
bajo el azul, sobre la piedra brota.
Y allí suena tu nombre ¡eternamente!
4
Está luz de Sevilla... Es el palacio
donde nací, con su rumor de fuente.
Mi padre, en su despacho. —La alta frente,
la breve mosca, y el bigote lacio—.
Mi padre, aún joven. Lee, escribe, hojea
sus libros y medita. Se levanta;
va hacia la puerta del jardín. Pasea.
A veces habla solo, a veces canta.
Sus grandes ojos de mirar inquieto
ahora vagar parecen, sin objeto
donde puedan posar, en el vacío.
Ya escapan de su ayer a su mañana;
ya miran en el tiempo, ¡padre mío!,
piadosamente mi cabeza cana.
Sonnets
1
My heart was where a hundred roads converge,
all of them passing through, and a broad crowd
of aimless, roomless travelers, who surge
as on a railway platform chaotic and loud.
My heart made its workday in the four winds
and spread itself along a hundred ways
of level land and where a rock storm begins
and happened on the sea of a hundred sails.
Today a swarm of bees flies to its hive
at the gray hour when bands of crows are hoarse,
flapping around to find their blackened cave,
and my heart starts to do its work, and soon
it joins the flowering fields of plump nectars
and mourning of a sullen afternoon.
2
Pilgrim, you’ll see the wonder of the road,
the road that goes to dreamed-of Compostela.48
O peak of flax and lilac! And below,
the plain with poplars forming a fire umbrella.
Autumn and its two rivers have placed gold,
making a circle round the giant sentinel
of stone and light, prodigious with its old
towers against the perfect blue. Its spell
goes on across the plain: a pack of lean
greyhounds and then the master of the chase
riding into the distant range. You’ll see
the vain phantasm of an ancient race.
You should get there when in the cold twilight
of the bare square, a balcony burns night.
3
Have I dirtied your memory? So often!
A life descends like an enormous river
floating a tall ship to the sea again,
with greenish slime and scum all in a stir.
Especially if a storm attacks the shore
and drags about the booty of the storm,
and in their sky some clouds of ashes soar
and crack in yellow lightning hugely warm.
Yet while it flows toward the unknown sea,
life also is the water of a spring
dripping and trickling brightly from its source
or else a raucous cataract flooding
below the blue and over broken rocks.
And there your name echoes eternally.
4
Light of Sevilla, the great palace house
where I was born, the gurgling fountain sound.
My father in his study. Forehead round
and high, short goatee, mustache drooping down.
My father still is young. He reads and writes,
leafs through his books and meditates. He springs
up near the garden door, strolls by the gate.
Sometimes he talks out loud, sometimes he sings.
And now his large eyes with their anxious glance
appear to wander with no object to
focus upon, not finding anywhere
to rest in void. They slip from past and through
tomorrow where, my father, they advance
to gaze so pityingly at my gray hair.
48 Santiago de Compostela, a beautiful medieval city in Galicia, northwestern Spain, and a chief shrine for Christian pilgrimage, named for Santiago, Saint James (Yaakov), one of the apostles and reputed br
other of Jesus.
Viejas canciones
1
A la hora del rocío,
de la niebla salen
sierra blanca y prado verde.
¡El sol en los encinares!
Hasta borrarse en el cielo,
suben las alondras.
¿Quién puso plumas al campo?
¿Quién hizo alas de tierra loca?
Al viento, sobre la sierra,
tiene el águila dorada
las anchas alas abiertas.
Sobre la picota
donde nace el río,
sobre el lago de turquesa
y los barrancos de verdes pinos;
sobre viente aldeas,
sobre cien caminos...
Por los senderos del aire,
señora águila,
¿dónde vais a todo vuelo tan de mañana?
2
Ya había un albor de luna
en el cielo azul.
¡La luna en los espartales,
cerca de Alicún!
Border of a Dream: Selected Poems of Antonio Machado (Spanish Edition) Page 27