To JOSÉ MARÍA PALACIO by A.

Machado
Fields of Castile

Palace, good friend,

Is it spring?
dressing the branches of the poplars
of the river and the roads? In the steppe
5 from the high Duero, Spring is slow,
but she is so beautiful and sweet when she arrives!...

Do the old elms have

some new sheets?
Even the acacias will be bare
10 and the snowy mountains of the sierras.
Oh white and pink Moncayo mole,
up there, in the sky of Aragón, so beautiful!
Are there blooming blackberries?
among the gray rocks,
15 and white daisies
among the fine grass?
Through those bell towers
The storks must have started to arrive.
There will be green wheatfields,
20 and brown mules in the fields,
and farmers who sow the late crops
with the April rains. The bees are already
they will free from thyme and rosemary.
Are there plum trees in bloom? Are there any violets left?

25 Stealthy hunters, the calls

from the partridge under the long layers,
they will not be missing. Palace, good friend,

Do the banks already have nightingales?

With the first lilies
30 and the first roses of the gardens,
on a blue afternoon, climb to the Espino,
to the high Espino where his land is...
Baeza, April 29, 1913
 The Dawn
Poet in New York.

The dawn of New York has

four columns of silt
and a hurricane of black doves
they splash in the stagnant waters.

5 The dawn of New York moans

through the immense stairs
searching among the edges
drawn buds of anguish.

The dawn arrives and no one receives it on their lips

10 because there is no tomorrow or possible hope there.
Sometimes the coins in furious swarms
they drill and devour abandoned children.

The first ones to leave understand with their bones.

that there will be no paradise nor plucked loves;
15 they know they are going to the mire of numbers and laws,
to games without art, to sweats without fruit.

The light is buried by chains and noises

in an impudent challenge of rootless science.
In the neighborhoods, there are people who wander sleepless.
20 like they just came out of a blood shipwreck.
 The Language of Love

Everything is so secret now

that the orb remains surrounded by a wall
circular. The windows open to an air
very clear with foliage.
5 At night still, the day surrounds us,
May or maybe June
and a garden freshness blows
our bodies, radiant from being souls
tangible and visible.
10 Oh, such fullness, I wish to be well said.
Silence flows into words,
and the word arises
with such fervor that it is new
to name you, present nakedness
15 under the light that reveals you, pure,
in a tax-exempt retreat
from shadow to sin,
without that vile mirror that deforms,
stretched in his language for others.
20 Your intimacy, love,
always newly created: poetry.
 INSOMNIO
Sons of Wrath

Madrid is a city of more than a million corpses

(according to the latest statistics).
Sometimes at night I toss and turn and sit up in this
niche in which I have been rotting for 45 years,
5 and I spent long hours listening to the hurricane moan, or bark
the dogs, or softly flowing the light of the moon.
And I spend long hours groaning like the hurricane, barking
like an enraged dog, flowing like milk from the
hot udder of a large yellow cow.
10 And I spend long hours asking God, asking Him
why does my soul rot slowly,
why more than a million corpses rot in this
city of Madrid,
why a billion corpses rot slowly
15 in the world.
Tell me, which garden do you want to fertilize with our decay?
Do you fear that the great rose bushes of the day will dry out, the sad ones?
deadly lilies of your nights?
 "ELOGIO DE LA SOMBRA" by Jorge Luis Borges
In Praise of Shadows

Old age (that is the name others give it)

it can be the time of our happiness.
The animal is dead or almost dead.
There remain the man and his soul.
5 I live among luminous and vague shapes
that are not yet the darkness.
Buenos Aires,
that was once torn apart in the outskirts
towards the incessant plain,
10 it has been the Recoleta, the Retiro,
the blurry streets of Once
and the precarious old houses
that we still call the South.
There have always been too many things in my life;
15 Democritus of Abdera plucked out his eyes to think;
Time has been my Democritus.
This twilight is slow and does not hurt;
flows down a gentle slope
and it resembles eternity.
20 My friends have no face,
women are what they were so many years ago,
the corners can be others,
There are no letters on the pages of the books.
All of this should frighten me,
25 but it is a sweetness, a return.
From the generations of the texts that exist on earth
I will have only read a few.
those I keep reading in memory,
reading and transforming.
30 From the South, from the East, from the West, from the North,

the paths that have brought me converge

to my secret center.
Those paths were echoes and steps,
women, men, agonies, resurrections,
35 days and nights,
between dreams and dreams,
every tiny moment of yesterday
and from the yesterdays of the world,
the firm sword of the Danish and the moon of the Persian,
40 the acts of the dead,
the shared love, the words,
Emerson and the snow and so many things.
Now I can forget them. I arrive at my center,
to my algebra and my key,
45 to my mirror.
Soon I will know who I am.
 THE POET
Shadow of Paradise
For you, who knows how the stone sings,
and whose delicate pupil already knows the weight of a mountain on a sweet eye,
and how the resonant cry of the forests gently settles one day into our veins;

for you, poet, who felt in your breath

5 the brutal onslaught of the celestial birds,
and in whose words the powerful wings of eagles soon fly
how the back of the warm fish shines without sound:
hey this book that I send into your hands
with a jungle demeanor,
10 but where suddenly a fresh drop of dew shines on a rose,
Or it is seen to stir the desire of the world,
the sadness that like a painful eyelid
closes the west and hides the sun like a darkened tear,
while the immense tired forehead
15 feel a kiss without light, a long kiss,
silent words that the world speaks hushing.

Yes, poet: love and pain are your kingdom.

Your mortal flesh, which, snatched away by the spirit,
burns in the night or rises at powerful midday,
20 immense prophetic tongue that licks the skies
words that illuminate and bring death to men.

The youth of your heart is not a beach

where the sea crashes with its broken foams,
teeth of love that bite the edges of the earth,
25 sweet braman to beings.
It is not that watchful lightning that suddenly threatens you,
illuminating an instant your bare forehead,
to sink into your eyes and ignite you, they burn or
the spaces with your life that are consumed by love.

30 No. That light that is in the world

it is not the last ash,
light that never fades like dust on the lips,
It is you, poet, whose hand and not the moon
I saw in the skies one night shining.

35 A robust chest that rests crossed by the sea

breathe like the immense blue tide
and opens its lying arms and touches, caresses
the vast limits of the earth.
40 So?
Yes, poet; throw away this book that aims to enclose a spark of sun within its pages,
and look at the light face to face, resting the head on the rock,
while your faraway feet feel the last kiss of the west
and your raised hands sweetly touch the moon,
45 and your hanging hair leaves a trail among the stars.
 Soliloquy of the Lighthouse Keeper
Invocations to the Graces of the world

How to fill you, solitude,

if not with yourself...

As a child, among the poor dens of the earth,

still in a dark corner,
5 I was searching in you, a lit garland,
my future auroras and furtive nights,
and in you I glimpsed them,
natural and exact, also free and faithful,
like me,
10 like you, eternal loneliness.

I got lost later in the unjust land

like someone looking for friends or ignored lovers;
different from the world,
I was serene light and unbridled longing,
15 and in the gloomy rain or in the evident sun
I wanted a truth that would betray you,
forgetting in my zeal
how the fleeting wings create their own cloud.

And as it was veiled to my eyes

20 with clouds over clouds of overflowing autumn
the light of those days glimpsed in yourself,
I denied you for very little;
for little loves neither true nor feigned,
for quiet friendships of couch and gesture,
25 for a name of reduced tail in a ghost world,
for the old forbidden pleasures
like the allowed nauseating ones,
useful only for the whispered elegant lounge,
in the mouths of lies and words of ice.

30 For you I now find the echo of the ancient person

that I went,
that I myself stained with those youthful betrayals;
for you I now find myself, constellated discoveries,
clean from another desire,
35 the sun, my god, the whispering night,
the rain, intimacy of always,
the forest and its pagan breath,
the sea, the sea as its beautiful name;
and above all them,
40 dark and slender body,
I find you, you, solitude so mine,
and you give me strength and weakness
like the tired bird the arms of the stone.
 Leaning on the balcony, I insatiably watch the waves,
45 I hear your dark curses,
I contemplate your white caresses;
and raised from the cradle watchful
I am at night a diamond that turns warning men,
for those whom I live, even when I don't see them;
50 and so, far from them,
having forgotten their names, I love them in crowds,
hoarse and violent like the sea, my dwelling,
pure before the waiting of a burning revolution
or surrendered and docile, as the sea knows how to be
55 when the hour of rest comes, its strength conquers.

You, solitary truth,

transparent passion, my eternal solitude,
you are immense hug;
the sun, the sea,
60 the darkness, the steppe,
the man and his desire,
the angry crowd,
What are they but yourself?

65 For you, my solitude, I looked for them one day;

in you, my solitude, I love them now.
 "RIBERA DE LOS ALISOS" by Jaime Gil de Biedma
Moralities

The pines are older.

Down the path,
sand dirty and abrasions,
just like my knees when I was a child,
5 the roots emerge.
And there at the bottom the river among the poplars
complete this landscape as always
what I want in the world
while it returns its memory to me
10 among the earliest of my life.

A small corner on the map of Spain

which I know by heart because it was my kingdom.
Could you imagine
that time has not passed,
15 the same as at six years old, at that age
in which sleeping truly rests,
with closed eyes
and I wake up in bed
I was imagining a day from the previous summer.

20 With the smell

deep of the pines.
But these changes are barely perceptible,
in the roots or on the very path,
that sometimes force me to undo what has been done.
25 There are these memories that serve no purpose
to die with me.

At least life at school

it was a hint of what life is.
And yet, it is these images
30 a night on horseback, the birth
terribly impure of the moon
or the vision of the river appearing
many years ago, in a month of September,
the exaltation and the fear of being alone
35 when is it going to sunset
before any others,
those who return and have a meaning
that I don't know well which one it is.
 The intensity
40 from a flash it may be only,
and also an ancient human inclination
for confusing beauty and significance.

Beautiful images of a story

that is not the whole story.
45 I remember the months of October too much,
on the way home at night, singing,
with the autumn wind cutting our lips,
and from the excitement in the upstairs room
by the lit fire, when they were family
50 the rhythm of the home and that of the seasons,
the sweetness of an artificial and rustic order,
like the characters
on the wallpaper.

Dream of the elders, all that.

55 Dream of her nostalgia for a nobler life,
from another age exalting them
towards an eternity of great estates,
beyond their fear of dying alone.
That's how I was, since I was a child, accustomed

60 to the exercise of unreality,

and still in melancholy
what remains for me since then,
there is resentment from a deceived conscience,
too vivid resentment
65 that neither silence nor solitude can calm him,
although perhaps also something deeper
bring to the heart.
Like the heartbeat
from the pines, when the wind stops
70 that prepare to darken.

Something that is no longer almost a feeling,

a provision
of deep affinity
with nature and with men,
75 that even the idea of dying seems
beautiful and calm. Just like this place.