Miguel Hernandez

Juan Ramon Jimenez

 

 

 painting by Joaquin Sorolla

Who Knows What is Going On

Translation by Robert Bly

     Who knows what is going on on the other side of each hour?

     How many times the sunrise was
there, behind a mountain!

     How many times the brilliant cloud piling up far off
was already a golden body full of thunder!

     This rose was poison.

     That sword gave life.

     I was thinking of a flowery meadow
at the end of a road,
and found myself in the slough.

     I was thinking of the greatness of what was human,
and found myself in the divine.

Juan Ramon Jimenez

 Dawn Outside the City Walls

TRANSLATED BY ROBERT BLY

You can see the face of everything, and it is white—

plaster, nightmare, adobe, anemia, cold—

turned to the east. Oh closeness to life!

Hardness of life! Like something

in the body that is animal—root, slag-ends—

with the soul still not set well there—

and mineral and vegetable!

Sun standing stiffly against man,

against the sow, the cabbages, the mud wall!

—False joy, because you are merely

in time, as they say, and not in the soul!

   The entire sky taken up   

by moist and steaming heaps,

a horizon of dung piles.   

Sour remains, here and there,   

of the night. Slices

of the green moon, half-eaten,

crystal bits from false stars,

plaster, the paper ripped off, still faintly

sky-blue. The birds

not really awake yet, in the raw moon,

streetlight nearly out.   

Mob of beings and things!

—A true sadness, because you are really deep

in the soul, as they say, not in time at all!

Juan Ramon Jimenez

 

“I Am Not I”

TRANSLATED BY ROBERT BLY

I am not I.

                   I am this one

walking beside me whom I do not see,

whom at times I manage to visit,

and whom at other times I forget;

who remains calm and silent while I talk,

and forgives, gently, when I hate,

who walks where I am not,

who will remain standing when I die.

Miguel Hernandez

To the International Soldier Fallen in Spain

If there are men who contain a soul without frontiers,
a brow scattered with universal hair,
covered with horizons, ships, and mountain chains,
with sand and with snow, then you are one of those.

Fatherlands called to you with all their banners,
so that your breath filled with beautiful movements.
You wanted to quench the thirst of panthers
and fluttered full against their abuses.

With a taste of all suns and seas,
Spain beckons you because in her you realize
your majesty like a tree that embraces a continent.

Around your bones, the olive groves will grow,
unfolding their iron roots in the ground,
embracing men universally, faithfully.

 

Federico Garcia Lorca

Federico & Francisco

Gacela Of The Dark Death

I want to sleep the dream of the apples, 
to withdraw from the tumult of cemetries. 
I want to sleep the dream of that child 
who wanted to cut his heart on the high seas. 

I don't want to hear again that the dead do not lose their blood, 
that the putrid mouth goes on asking for water. 
I don't want to learn of the tortures of the grass, 
nor of the moon with a serpent's mouth 
that labors before dawn. 

I want to sleep awhile, 
awhile, a minute, a century; 
but all must know that I have not died; 
that there is a stable of gold in my lips; 
that I am the small friend of the West wing; 
that I am the intense shadows of my tears. 

Cover me at dawn with a veil, 
because dawn will throw fistfuls of ants at me, 
and wet with hard water my shoes 
so that the pincers of the scorpion slide. 

For I want to sleep the dream of the apples, 
to learn a lament that will cleanse me to earth; 
for I want to live with that dark child 
who wanted to cut his heart on the high seas. 

    Tr. Robert Bly 

Federico Garcia Lorca

 

Romance Sonombulo

Green, how I want you green.
Green wind. Green branches.
The ship out on the sea
and the horse on the mountain.
With the shade around her waist
she dreams on her balcony,
green flesh, her hair green,
with eyes of cold silver.
Green, how I want you green.
Under the gypsy moon,
all things are watching her
and she cannot see them.
Green, how I want you green.
Big hoarfrost stars
come with the fish of shadow
that opens the road of dawn.
The fig tree rubs its wind
with the sandpaper of its branches,
and the forest, cunning cat,
bristles its brittle fibers.
But who will come? And from where?
She is still on her balcony
green flesh, her hair green,
dreaming in the bitter sea.
--My friend, I want to trade
my horse for her house,
my saddle for her mirror,
my knife for her blanket.
My friend, I come bleeding
from the gates of Cabra.
--If it were possible, my boy,
I'd help you fix that trade.
But now I am not I,
nor is my house now my house.
--My friend, I want to die
decently in my bed.
Of iron, if that's possible,
with blankets of fine chambray.
Don't you see the wound I have
from my chest up to my throat?
--Your white shirt has grown
thirsy dark brown roses.
Your blood oozes and flees a
round the corners of your sash.
But now I am not I,
nor is my house now my house.
--Let me climb up, at least,
up to the high balconies;
Let me climb up! Let me,
up to the green balconies.
Railings of the moon
through which the water rumbles.
Now the two friends climb up,
up to the high balconies.
Leaving a trail of blood.
Leaving a trail of teardrops.
Tin bell vines
were trembling on the roofs.
A thousand crystal tambourines
struck at the dawn light.