Caminante No Hay Camino.
One of my favorite poems: Caminante no hay camino, by Antonio Machado.
Caminante, son tus huellas
el camino y nada más;
Caminante, no hay camino,
se hace camino al andar.
Al andar se hace el camino,
y al volver la vista atrás
se ve la senda que nunca
se ha de volver a pisar.
Caminante no hay camino
sino estelas en la mar.
I am pretty much in love with the Spanish language. My mother would say that this is remarkable, considering the distaste I’ve regularly shown for other singularly Spanish things, like Spanish housewives and Spanish parties (both of the festive and political variety) and Spanish public library systems and Spanish slutty bathroom mirror pictures (OH MY GOD THE LEVEL OF OBNOXIOUS) and Spanish late-night soap operas and Spanish temperaments and Spanish supermarket dairy aisles.
Antonio Machado makes up for all that, though, as do Federico García Lorca and Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer and Vicente Aleixander and Miguel Hernández. I know that sounds dreadfully pretentious, like I’m some kind of beret-wearing, chain-smoking 1900’s CHILD OF THE BOHEMIAN REVOLUTION, sleeping in opium dens and defending all poets as divine creatures of the new century, but I like to think that sometimes you’re allowed to be a little pretentious. That’s what I like to think, anyway.
Soneto de la dulce queja, by Federico García Lorca:
Tengo miedo a perder la maravilla
de tus ojos de estatua, y el acento
que de noche me pone en la mejilla
la solitaria rosa de tu aliento.
Tengo pena de ser en esta orilla
tronco sin ramas; y lo que más siento
es no tener la flor, pulpa o arcilla,
para el gusano de mi sufrimiento.
Si tú eres el tesoro oculto mío,
si eres mi cruz y mi dolor mojado,
si soy el perro de tu señorío,
no me dejes perder lo que he ganado
y decora las aguas de tu río
con hojas de mi otoño enajenado.
Translated conveniently into English, Sonnet of the Sweet Complaint:
Never let me lose the marvel
of your statue-like eyes, or the accent
the solitary rose of your breath
places on my cheek at night.
I am afraid of being, on this shore,
a branchless trunk, and what I most regret
is having no flower, pulp, or clay
for the worm of my despair.
If you are my hidden treasure,
if you are my cross, my dampened pain,
if I am a dog, and you alone my master,
never let me lose what I have gained,
and adorn the branches of your river
with leaves of my estranged Autumn.
2 Comments