MACHADO, Antonio
Yo voy soñando caminos
Yo voy soñando caminos
de la tarde. ¡Las colinas
doradas, los verdes pinos,
las polvorientas encinas!...
¿Adónde el camino irá?
Yo voy cantando, viajero
a lo largo del sendero...
- La tarde cayendo está -.
‘En el corazón tenía
la espina de una pasión;
logré arrancármela un dia:
ya no siento el corazón.’
Y todo el campo un momento
se queda, mudo y sombrio,
meditando. Suena el viento
en los álamos del río.
La tarde más se oscurece;
y el camino que serpea
y débilmente blanquea,
se enturbia y desaparece.
Mi cantar vuelve a plañir:
‘Aguda espina dorada,
quién te pudiera sentir
en el corazón clavada.
I Have Walked Down Many Roads
I have walked down many roads
and cleared many paths;
I have navigated a hundred oceans
and anchored off a hundred shores.
All over, I have seen
caravans of sadness,
pompous and melancholy men
drunk with black shadows,
and defrocked pedants
who stare, keep quiet, and think
they know, because they don’t
drink wine in the neighborhood bars.
Bad people who go around
polluting the earth . . .
And all over, I have seen
people who dance or play,
when they can, and work
their four handfuls of land.
If they turn up someplace,
they never ask where they are.
When they travel, they ride
on the backs of old mules,
and don’t know how to hurry,
not even on holidays.
When there’s wine, they drink wine;
when there’s no wine, they drink cool water.
These are good people, who live,
work, get by, and dream;
and on a day like all the others
they lie down under the earth.
(Translation: Don Share)
El querer
En tu boca roja y fresca
beso, y mi sed no se apaga,
que en cada beso quisiera
beber entera tu alma.
Me he enamorado de ti
y es enfermedad tan mala,
que ni la muerte la cura,
¡bien lo saben los que aman!
Loco me pongo si escucho
el ruido de tu charla,
y el contacto de tu mano
me da la vida y me mata.
Yo quisiera ser el aire
que toda entera te abraza,
yo quisiera ser la sangre
que corre por tus entrañas.
Son las líneas de tu cuerpo
el modelo de mis ansias,
el camino de mis besos
y el imán de mis miradas.
Siento al ceñir tu cintura
una duda que me mata
que quisiera en un abrazo
todo tu cuerpo y tu alma.
Estoy enfermo de ti,
de curar no hay esperanza,
que en la sed de este amor loco
tu eres mi sed y mi agua.
Maldita sea la hora
en que contemplé tu cara,
en que vi tus ojos negros
y besé tus labios grana.
Maldita sea la sed
y maldita sea el agua,
maldito sea el veneno
que envenena y que no mata.
En tu boca roja y fresca
beso, y mi sed no se apaga,
que en cada beso quisiera
beber entera tu alma.
Foreign in My Own Land
Even among familiar hills and fields
I have become foreign in my own land,
where the Duero dances over gray stones
and dances through phantom oaks,
in mystical Castile, war-like Castile,
gentle, humble, proud Castile,
Castile of snobbery and of wealth.
But I was born in Andalusia.
And filled with childhood memories,
I dream of singing her songs—
of sunshine through waving fronds,
storks perched in bell towers,
the cities beneath an indigo sky
bereft of women, deserted squares
where orange trees hunch blazing
with fruit, the shadowy orchards
where the pale fruit of lemon trees
shines in a fountain’s water.
Spikenard, carnation, basil, and mint,
olive groves half-invisible under
a brash sun that stuns and blinds,
the lavender mountains where
the evening’s rouge spills out.
Without a line to anchor memories
to the heart, they have no life.
Tattered and worn, they are
the plunder of all remembering,
the payload memory carries in itself.
Someday, in blessed light, they’ll return
like immaculate bodies to the shore.
From Sonetos: III
Have I tarnished your memory? So many times!
Life flows on by like some wide stream,
and with a tall ship, to the sea,
it bears green mud, and clouds of slime.
More so if storms have washed banks bare
dragging along the spoils of tempest,
and if an ashen cloud in heaven
is ablaze with bright-yellow flares.
Yet however it flows to an unknown shore,
life is still fountain water, freed
drop by drop, from its pure source,
or torrents of spray, that break noisily
beneath the sky, from the rocky force.
And your name sounds there, eternally!
Dreams in Dialogue IV
Oh solitude, my sole companion,
muse of marvels, that gave my voice
the word unasked for, answer my question!
Who is this now with whom I talk?
Away from the noisy masquerade
My friendless sadness turns, lady,
with you, you of the veiled face,
always veiled to speak with me.
And I think: that I am who I am, to me
that’s no great puzzle, to be the shape
created in the inner mirror, it’s the mystery
rather of your loving voice: show your face,
so that your eyes of diamond I might see,
your diamond eyes fixed on me in space.
Guadarrama
Guadarrama, is it you, old friend,
mountains white and gray
that I used to see painted against the blue
those afternoons of the old days in Madrid?
Up your deep ravines
and past your bristling peaks
a thousand Guadarramas and a thousand suns
come riding with me, riding to your heart.
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de sol y grana,volar bajo el cielo azul,temblar
súbitamente y quebrarse...
el camino y nada más; caminante, no hay camin,
se hace camino al andar.
sino estelas en la mar...
“Caminante no hay camino,
se hace camino al andar. “
se hace camino al andar."
se hace camino al andar.”
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on sun and crimson, fly under a blue sky, shudder
suddenly, and break...
are the path, and nothing else.
a path is made by walking.
but wakes on the sea...
A path is made by walking".
A path is made by walking".
A path is made by walking.
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la blanca sombra del amor primero,
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where memory goes guarding life’s purest breaths
first love’s white shadow,
that you had wished to hold in dream, and all things loved
that touched the soul, the depths of sky?
the old life you renewed and set in order? Have the anvils and crucibles of your spirit
laboured here only for dust and wind?
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soñé, ¡bendita ilusiòn!, que una fontana fluía dentro de mi corazòn. Di: ¿por qué acequia escondida, agua, vienes hasta mí, manantial de nueva vida en donde nunca bebí?
soñé, ¡bendita ilusiòn!, que una colmena tenía dentro de mi corazòn; y las doradas abejas iban fabricando en él, con las amarguras viejas, blanca cera y dulce miel.
soñé, ¡bendita ilusiòn!, que un sol ardiente lucía
dentro de mi corazòn.
calores de rojo hogar, y era sol porque alumbraba y porque hacía llorar.
soñé, ¡bendita ilusiòn!, que era Dios lo que tenía
dentro de mi corazòn.
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I dreamt—marvelous error!— that a spring was breaking out in my heart. I said: Along which secret aqueduct, Oh water, are you coming to me, water of a new life that I have never drunk?
I dreamt—marvelous error!— that I had a beehive here inside my heart. And the golden bees were making white combs and sweet honey from my old failures.
I dreamt—marvelous error!— that a fiery sun was giving
light inside my heart.
warmth as from a hearth, and sun because it gave light and brought tears to my eyes.
I dreamt—marvelous error!— that it was God I had here inside my heart. |
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más honda que la mar. En mi parterre, miro a la mar que el horizonte cierra. Tú asomada, Guiomar, a un finisterre,
que Camoens cantara, tenebrosa. Acaso a ti mi ausencia te acompaña. A mí me duele tu recuerdo, diosa.
Y es la total angustia de la muerte, con la sombra infecunda de la llama
y la flor imposible de la rama que ha sentido del hacha el corte frío.
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Deeper than the sea. In my parterre, I look out to the sea bound by the horizon. You look out, Guiomar, to a Finisterre,
Which Camoens sang, dark. Perhaps my absence stays with you. Your memory hurts me, goddess.
And it is the total anguish of death, With the ragged shadow of the flame
And the impossible flower of the branch
Which has felt the cold cut of the ax.
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