branch. He will open up, with a black key,
the way to his cold room. O desert cot
and clouded mirror glass! And empty heart!
Miracle
Andrés Santaïlana.—Born in Madrid in 1899.
An evening in Segovia I am strolling
along the cobbled street drenched by the Eresma River.
To read a Bible
I slip my hand down to my glasses case
and grope for a platform for my eyes:
a floating balcony of vision.
I open the case firmly
the way a doctor says: Hang on,
now see if you see.
I snap it open. Nothing inside.
Point de lunettes... No spectacles. I swear
something glittered when I cracked the black
cover of the miniature coffin
in my pocket, but my specs winged through the sky,
springing out of their cloister
like a glass butterfly.
With the book under my arm
yet confined to the orphanage in my eyes,
I whisper: What I left dying
with laughter in my room
has a double hanging out somewhere
or all vision is an act of faith.
58 Like the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, Antonio Machado in his last years made up fictitious personages through whom he spoke: mainly Abel Martín and his disciple Juan de Mairena. Machado also has an Apocryphal Songbook, which initially includes twelve poets, and to which he will later add five more. One of these he calls “Antonio Machado,” and cites two poems, “Alborada” (“Dawn Song”) and an untitled sonnet. For each invented poet he has a brief headnote.
Adíos
Y nunca más la tierra de ceniza
a pisar volveré, que Duero abraza.
¡Oh loma de Santana, ancha y maciza;
placeta del Mirón, desierta plaza!
Con el sol del la tarde en mis balcones
nunco os veré. No me pidáis presencia;
las almas huyen para dar canciones:
alma es distancia y horizonte, ausencia.
Mas quien eschuche el agria melodía
con que divierto el corazón viajero
por estos campos de mi Andalucía,
ya sabe manantial, cauce y reguero
del agua santa de la huerta mía.
¡No todas vais al mar, aguas del Duero!.
Córdoba, 1913. Copiado en 1924.
Goodbye
And I will never step again on land
of ashes that the Duero hugs with care.
Santana hill of massive rock and sand!
Mirón’s tiny plaza. Deserted square!
Afternoon sun. From my own balcony
never will I see you. Ask for no presence.
Souls flee to render their own melody.
Soul is distance and the horizon absence.
But someone, listening to the caustic notes
with which I entertain my traveler heart
in cante hondo Andalusian meadows,
already knows the source and riverbed
of holy waters in my orchard. Not
all Duero waters reach seas of the dead.59
Córdoba, 1913. Copied in 1924.
59 Written in Cordoba, 1913, and slightly altered in Segovia, 1924, which is the version used here. In the earlier version, the above “a pisar volveré, que Duero abraza” is “he de volver a ver, que el Duero abraza”; “de la tierra mía” is “de mi Andalucía”,; and “del agua clara de mi huerta umbría” is “del agua santa de la huerta mía.” Passionate, mysterious, and highly crafted, it may be the earliest sonnet Machado wrote and decided to keep. In its nostalgic comparison of geographies, it stands in perfect accord with other poems composed in Baeza. Though he kept and reworked it (unlike many poems and versions of them, which he threw away, especially during his years in Segovia, 1919–31), he did not place it in New Songs or in a book contemporary with its content. Rather, he included both “Goodbye” and “Old City” amid the prose of Apocryphal Songbook, after his “Twelve Poets Who Might Have Existed” (actually containing fourteen invented poets). These two important sonnets stand among five leftovers at the end of his whimsical songbook.
Soneto
¿En dónde, sobre piedra aborrascada,
vieja ciudad de pardo caserío
te he visto, y entre montes empinada?
Al fondo de un barranco suena un río.
Vieja ciudad, la luna amoratada
asoma, enorme, en el azul vacío
sobre tu fortaleza torreada.
¡Oh, ruina familiar de un sueño mío!
Mas esos claros chopos de ribera
—¡cual vence una sonrisa un duro ceño!—
me tornan a un jardín de primavera,
goces del sueño, al verdear risueño.
¡Rosa carmín y blanca arrebolera
también salís del fondo de mi sueño!
1907. Copiado en 1924
Sonnet60
Old city and its heaps of earth-brown streets,
where, on what precarious and stormy stone
have I seen you? Hanging on mountain peaks?
Deep in a gorge the river waters sound.
The old city? Is it a violet moon
rising enormous in the hollow gleam
of blue over your castle towers and dome?
Oh, the familiar wreckage of my dream!
But those luminous poplars on the shore
—like a wide smile overcoming a frown!—
carry me to a garden in the spring,
hinges of dream, an ecstasy of green.
Carmine rose and white cloudy afternoon,
from caverns of my dream, you also soar!
1907. Copied in 1924
60 Like the previous early sonnet, “Goodbye,” this poem corresponds in theme and time to the Baeza poems of New Songs (1912–17), and was probably copied and worked on in 1924 in Segovia. Some scholars date the original poem back to 1907, Machado’s first year in Soria, but this seems most unlikely. The poem has the nondescript title “Soneto.” Following the practice for untitled poems, I’ve used all or part of a first line for the title.
Poems of the War
Poesías de guerra (1936–1939)
La primavera
Más fuerte que la guerra—espanto y grima—
cuando con torpe vuelo de avutarda
el ominoso trimotor se encima
y sobre el vano techo se retarda,
hoy tu alegre zalema el campo anima,
tu claro verde el chopo en yemas guarda.
Fundida irá la nieve de la cima
al hielo rojo de la tierra parda.
Mientras retumba el monte, el mar humea,
da la sirena el lúgubre alarido,
y en el azul el avión platea,
¡cuán agudo se filtra hasta mi oído,
niña inmortal, infatigable dea,
el agrio son de tu rabel florido!
Spring
More powerful than the war—its terror and crime,
when with the giant bustard’s torpid flight
the ominous trimotor starts to climb
and over rooftops hovers in bleak fright—
today your cheerful salaam fires the plains,
the poplars guard your bright transparent green
in buds. The melting snow from high terrains
will flood red ice on lands gone drab and mean.
While mountains rumble and the oceans fume,
a siren wails alarm in deadly gloom
and the plane silvers a blue firmament;
untiring goddess, floating through the sphere,
immortal child, the wind stabs in my ear,
sounding your blooming rebec’s harsh lament.
El poeta recuerda las tierras de Soria
¡Ya su perfil zancudo en el regato,
en el azul el cielo de ballesta,
&
nbsp; o, sobre el ancho nido de ginesta,
en torre, torre y torre, el garabato
de la cigüeña!... En la memoria mía
tu recuerdo a traición ha florecido;
y hoy comienza tu campo empedernido
el sueño verde de la tierra fría.
Soria pura, entre montes de violeta.
Di tú, avión marcial, si el alto Duero
adonde vas, recuerda a su poeta
al revivir su rojo Romancero;
¿o es, otra vez, Caín, sobre el planeta,
bajo tus alas, moscardón guerrero?
The Poet Recalls the Lands of Soria
Its lanky profile wading in the pool,
rising into the blue with crossbow verve,
or landing on a patch of fragrant broom,
perched on a tower, shaped in a pothook curve:
it is the stork! And in my memory
your memory has bloomed and given birth
subversively. Today your stony sea
of fields begins the dream of frozen earth:
pure Soria, mountainsides of violet.
Warplane, let me know if the upper Duero,
your target now, remembers who its poet
once was—reliving its red ballads. Or,
under your wings, droning hornet of war,
are you not Cain again over the planet?
Amanecer en Valencia
Desde una torre
Estas rachas de marzo, en los desvanes
—hacia la mar—del tiempo; la paloma
de pluma tornasol, los tulipanes
gigantes del jardín, y el sol que asoma,
bola de fuego entre dorada bruma,
a iluminar la tierra valentina...
¡Hervor de leche y plata, añil y espuma,
y velas blancas en la mar latina!
Valencia de fecundas primaveras,
de floridas almunias y arrozales,
feliz quiero cantarte, como eras,
domando a un ancho río en tus canales,
al dios marino con tus albuferas,
al centauro de amor con tus rosales.
Dawning in Valencia
from a tower
These blasting winds of March, caught in the attic
—facing the sea—of time the glowing plumes
of iridescent doves, tulips gigantic
here in the garden, and the sun that looms,
a ball of fire lost in violet brume,
lighting the earth of Valencia. Fury
of milk and silver, indigo and spume,
and white sails mingling on the Latin sea.
Valencia with its spring of fertile riches,
its orchards blooming and its fields of rice,
I’d like to sing you happy as you were,
mastering a river in your farming ditches,
taming a seagod in your salt harbor,
tangling centaurs of love in your rose trees.
La muerte del niño herido
Otra vez es la noche... Es el martillo
de la fiebre en las sienes bien vendadas
del niño. —Madre, ¡el pájaro amarillo!
¡Las mariposas negras y moradas!
—Duerme, hijo mío. Y la manita oprime
la madre, junto al lecho. —¡Oh flor de fuego!
¿Quién ha de helarte, flor de sangre, dime?
Hay en la pobre alcoba olor de espliego;
fuera la oronda luna que blanquea
cúpula y torre a la ciudad sombría.
Invisible avión moscardonea.
—¿Duermes, oh dulce flor de sangre mía?
El cristal del balcón repiquetea.
—¡Oh, fría, fría, fría, fría, fría!
The Death of the Wounded Child
Again the hammer through the night is heard:
the fever in the bandaged temples of
the child. “Mother, look, the yellow bird!
and black and purple butterflies above!”
“Sleep now, my son.” The mother near the bed
squeezes the little hand. “O flower of fire!
Who can freeze you, tell me, O flower of blood?”
In the bleak room a smell of lavender.
Outside, the round full moon is whitening dome
and tower across the city in its gloom.
Somewhere a droning plane one cannot see.
“Are you asleep? O flower of blood and gold.”
The windows clamor on the balcony.
“O cold, cold, cold, cold, cold!”
“De mar a mar entre los dos la guerra”
De mar a mar entre los dos la guerra,
más honda que la mar. En mi parterre,
miro a la mar que el horizonte cierra.
Tú, asomada, Guiomar, a un finisterre,
miras hacia otro mar, la mar de España
que Camoens cantara, tenebrosa.
Acaso a ti mi ausencia te acompaña.
A mí me duele tu recuerdo, diosa.
La guerra dio al amor el tajo fuerte.
Y es la total angustia de la muerte,
con la sombra infecunda de tu llama
y la soñada miel de amor tardío,
y la flor imposible de la rama
que ha sentido del hacha el corte frío.
“From sea to sea between us is the war”
From sea to sea between us is the war
now deeper than the sea. From my parterre
I watch the sky-bound water, Guiomar.
Then you appear upon a finisterre,
watching another sea, the sea of Spain
that Camões sang to us, a murky sea.
Goddess, your memory is a well of pain,
and can my absence be your company?
The war has cut a trench between our love.
Here is death’s agony: sterile shadow
of a high fire and the dreamed honey of
a love that came to us in life too late.
Our love’s a hopeless blossom on a bough
that now has felt the ax’s frozen blade.
“Otra vez el ayer”
Otra vez el ayer. Tras la persiana,
música y sol; en el jardín cercano,
la fruta de oro, al levantar la mano,
el puro azul dormido en la fontana.
Mi Sevilla infantil, ¡tan sevillana!
¡Cuál muerde el tiempo tu memoria en vano!
¡Tan nuestra! Avisa tu recuerdo, hermano.
No sabemos
de quién va a ser mañana.
Alguien vendió la piedra de los lares
al pesado teutón, al hambre mora,
y al ítalo las puertas de los mares.
¡Odio y miedo a la estirpe redentora
que muele el fruto de los olivares,
y ayuna y labra, y siembra y canta y llora!
“Again our yesterday”
Again our yesterday. Behind the blinds,
music and sun, and in the nearby garden
the gold fruit. Just raising my hand I find
a stainless blue is sleeping in the fountain.
My childhood in Sevilla, and with her filled!
How hopeless time devours your memory!
So much our own, my brother! Manuel,
remember. Whose tomorrow will it be?
Someone sold off our fire hearth of stone
to the fat Teuton and the hungry Moor.
To the Italian they sold the sea’s doors.
In our saved people hate and fear are deep.
They grind the olives in the olive groves,
and fast and labor, sow and sing and weep!
Canción
Ya va subiendo la luna
sobre el naranjal.
Luce Venus como una
pajarita de cristal.
Ámbar y berilo,
tras de la sierra lejana,
el cielo, y de porcelana
morada en el mar tranquilo.
Ya es de no
che en el jardín
—¡el agua en sus atanores!—
y sólo huele a jazmín,
ruiseñor de los olores.
¡Cómo parece dormida
la guerra, de mar a mar,
mientras Valencia florida
se bebe el Guadalaviar!
Valencia de finas torres
y suaves noches, Valencia,
¿estáré contigo,
cuando mirarte no pueda,
donde crece la arena del campo
y se aleja La mar de violeta?
Rocafort, Mayo de 1937
Song
Now the moon is climbing
over the orange grove.
Venus shines like
a tiny glass bird.
Behind the far range
the sky amber and beryl,
and purple porcelain
on the quiet sea.
Now night is in the garden,
Border of a Dream: Selected Poems of Antonio Machado (Spanish Edition) Page 31