Border of a Dream: Selected Poems of Antonio Machado (Spanish Edition) (29 page)

1

I didn’t know

when you held a yellow lemon

in your hand

or the thread of a clear day,

Guiomar, in a gold skein.

Your mouth smiled at me.

I asked, what do you offer me?

Time as fruit your hand

chose from the ripeness

of your orchard?

Vain time

of a beautiful motionless evening?

A gold absence spellbound?

A copy of sleeping water?

A true

daybreak

burning from mountain to mountain?

Does love in its cloudy mirrors

break the spool

of its ancient dusks?

2

In a garden I dreamt of you,

Guiomar, high over the river,

a garden of a time locked up

behind a cold iron grating.

An unusual bird is singing

softly in the lotus tree

beside the living and holy water.

All thirst and all fountain.

In that garden, Guiomar,

a mutual garden that our two hearts

simultaneously contrive,

our hours fuse and grow. The grapes

of a dream—we are together—

we squeeze into a clean glass

and forget our double tale.

(One: Woman and man,

although a gazelle and lion,

come together to drink.

The other: Love can’t be

so lucky as to have

two solitudes in one,

not even of a man and woman.)

For you the sea rehearses waves and foams,

rainbow over mountain and more colors,

the pheasant of the dawn plays songs and plumes,

and the owl of Minerva eyes even larger.

For you, O Guiomar!

3

thinks of you. The distance

is lemon and violet,

the fields are still green.

You are with me, Guiomar.

The mountains absorb us.

From oak to oak

the day is wearing out.

The train devours and devours

day and rail. Broom flower

slips into shade. The gold

of Guadarrama blurs away.

Because a goddess and her lover

escape together, the full moon

pursues them panting.

The train hides and booms

inside a giant mountain.

Barren pastures, lofty sky.

Behind the granite sierra

and other basalt sierras,

the sea at last and the infinite.

We go together. We are free.

Though God, a fierce king

as in the tale, mounts

the best steed of the wind,

though he violently swears

his vengeance,

though he even saddles thought,

our love is free. No one halts it.

Today I write you from my traveler’s cell

at the hour of an imaginary rendezvous.

A downpour shatters the rainbow in the air

and planetary sadness on the mountains.

Sun and bells in the old tower.

O live and quiet afternoon

countering
panta rhei
with
nothing flows,

a childlike afternoon your poet loves!

An adolescent day—

bright eyes and dark muscles,

when you thought of Eros by the fountain,

I was kissing your lips and squeezing your breasts!

In this April light all is transparency,

the now of yesterday, the Still Now

which time sings and tells

at a ripe hour

and burns into a single noon,

a choir of evenings and of dawns.

To you, Guiomar, my longing.

1

¡Sólo tu figura,

como una centella blanca,

en mi noche oscura!

¡Y
en la tersa arena,

cerca de la mar

tu carne rosa y morena,

súbitamente, Guiomar!

En el gris del muro,

cárcel y aposento,

y en un paisaje futuro

con sólo tu voz y el viento;

en el nácar frío

de tu zarcillo en mi boca,

Guiomar, y en el calofrío

de una amanecida loca;

asomada al malecón

que bate la mar de un sueño

y bajo el arco del ceño

de mi vigilia, a traición,

¡siempre tú!

mírame en ti castigado:

reo de haberte creado,

ya no te puedo olvidar.

2

Todo amor es fantasía;

él inventa el año, el día,

la hora y su melodía;

inventa el amante y, más,

la amada. No prueba nada,

contra el amor, que la amada

no haya existido jamás.

3

Escribiré en tu abanico:

te quiero para olvidarte,

para quererte te olvido.

4

Te abanicarás

con un madrigal que diga:

en amor el olvido pone la sal.

5

Te pintaré solitaria

en la urna imaginaria

de un daguerrotipo viejo,

o en el fondo de un espejo,

viva y quieta,

olvidando a tu poeta.

6

Y te enviaré mi canción:

“Se canta lo que se pierde”,

con un papagayo verde

que la diga en tu balcón.

7

Que apenas si de amor el ascua humea

sabe el poeta que la voz engola

y, barato cantor, se pavonea

con su pesar o enluta su viola;

y que si amor da su destello, sola

la pura estrofa suena,

fuente de monte, anónima y serena.

Bajo el azul olvido, nada canta,

ni tu nombre ni el mío, el agua santa.

Sombra no tiene de su turbia escoria

limpio metal; el verso del poeta

lleva el ansia de amor que lo engendrara

como lleva el diamante sin memoria

—frío diamante—el fuego del planeta

trocado en luz, en una joya clara...

8

Abre el rosal de la carroña horrible

su olvido en flor, y extraña mariposa,

jalde y carmín, de vuelo imprevisible,

salir se ve del fondo de una fosa.

Con el terror de víbora encelada,

junto al lagarto frío,

con el absorto sapo en la azulada

libélula que vuela sobre el río,

con los montes de plomo y de ceniza,

sobre los rubios agros

que el sol de mayo hechiza,

se ha abierto un abanico de milagros

—el ángel del poema lo ha querido—

en la mano creadora del olvido...

1

Only your face

like white lightning

in my dark night.

In the glossy sand

near the sea,

your rose and dark flesh,

suddenly, Guiomar!

In the gray of the wall,

prison and bedroom

and in a future landscape

with only your voice and the wind;

in the cold mother-of-pearl

of your earring in my mouth,

Guiomar, and in the shivering chill

of a crazy daybreak;

you appear on a pier

where the sea of a dream is breaking,

and under the arching frown

of my vigil, treacherously,

always you!

see me punished in you:

guilty of having created you,

now I cannot forget you.

2

All love is fantasy,

inventing the year, the day,

the hour and its melody.

It invents the lover, and even

the beloved. This proves nothing

against love, since the beloved

never existed anyway.

3

I will write on your fan:

I love you to forget you,

to love you I forget you.

4

You will fan yourself

with a madrigal saying,

In love forgetting adds the salt.

5

I will paint you all alone

on an imaginary urn

from an old daguerreotype

or in a mirror’s depths,

cunning and quiet,

forgetting your poet.

6

I will send you my song:

“One sings what is lost,”

and a green parrot

to say it on your balcony.

7

If the ashes of love slightly smolder,

the poet knows his voice is choking

and like a cheap tenor he is strutting

with his grief making his viola mourn;

that if love flashes, only

a perfect stanza sounds,

a mountain brook anonymous and serene.

Below the forgotten blue, nothing sings,

not your name or mine, the holy water.

Shadow has no clean metal

in its disturbing slag. The poet’s voice

carries the hunger of love that engenders it

as a diamond without memory—

a cold diamond—carries a planetary fire

become light in a pristine gem...

8

The rosebush of terrible carrion opens

its blossoming oblivion, and a strange butterfly

lemon yellow and crimson, in unforeseen flight,

is seen soaring up from the bottom of a ditch.

With the terror of a jealous viper

beside a cold lizard,

with the distracted toad before the bluish dragonfly

skimming over the river,

with the mountains of lead and ash,

over the blond earth

that May sun holds spellbound,

a fan of miracles has opened

—the angel of the poem wanted it—

in the creating hand of forgetting...

1

Como una ballesta,

en el aire azul,

hacia la torre mudéjar...

2

La cigüeña absorta,

sobre su nido de ramas,

mirando la tarde roja.

3

Primavera vino.

Violetas moradas,

almendros floridos.

4

Se abrasó en la llama

de una velita de cera

la mariposilla blanca.

5

¡Noches de Santa Teresa!

Ya no hay quien medita de noche

con las ventanas abiertas.

6

Los cuatro quicios del mundo

tienen ya

estrellitas nuevas

que brillando están.

A nuevas estrellas, otros

barquitos sobre la mar.

1

Like a crossbow

in blue wind,

toward the Mudéjar tower.
⁵⁵

2

The stork absorbed

on its nest of branches,

looking at red afternoon.

3

Spring came.

Violet mulberry trees,

blossoming almonds.

4

She hugged the flame

of a little wax candle,

the white tiny butterfly.

5

Nights of Santa Teresa!

Now no one meditates at night

with open windows.

6

The world’s four props

already have

tiny new

glittering stars.

New stars, and other

small boats on the sea.

⁵⁵
Mudéjar refers to the Moors who stayed in Spain after the Christian reconquest
(la reconquista).
Here, it refers to the particular Moorish Islamic architecture in Christian Spain, with geometrically decorative and structural qualities that ultimately influenced Christian architecture. Mudéjar also describes the Islamic qualities of other visual arts and crafts.

Abrió la ventana.

Sonaba el planeta.

En la piedra el agua.

Hasta el río llegan

de la sierra fría

las uñas de piedra.

¡A la luna clara,

canchos de granito

donde bate el agua!

¡A la luna clara,

Guadarrama pule

las uñas de piedra!

Por aquí fue España,

llamaban Castilla

a unas tierras altas...

She opened the window.

The planet sounded.

Water on stone.

Fingernails of stone

reach the river

from the cold sierra.

In bright moon

granite boulders

where water beats!

In bright moon

Guadarrama polishes

the stone’s nails!

Spain passed this way

and these high lands

they called Castilla.

1

Si hablo, suena

mi propia voz como un eco,

y está mi canto tan hueco

qu ya ni espanta mi pena.

2

Si me tengo que morir

poco me importa aprender.

Y si no puedo saber,

poco me importa vivir.

3

“¿Qué es amor?”, me preguntaba

una niña. Contesté:

“Verte una vez y pensar

haberte visto otra vez.”

4

Hombre occidental,

tu miedo al Oriente, ¿es miedo

a dormir o a despertar?

5

La ciudad desierta

se sale a los montes

por las siete puertas.

1

If I speak, my own voice

sounds like an echo

and my song is so hollow

my pain doesn’t terrify.

2

If I must die

I don’t care about learning.

If I can’t know,

I don’t care about living.

3

Hour of the last sun.

The young woman of my dreams

shows up in my heart.

4

You of the West,

your fear of the Orient, is it fear

of sleeping or of waking?
⁵⁶

5

The deserted city

leaves for the mountains

through her seven doors.

⁵⁶
Probably omitted from
New Songs
(1917–1930).