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

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for my son Tony

named for Spain’s nightingale

don Antonio

CONTENTS

SOLITUDES, GALLERIES AND OTHER POEMS (1899–1907)

SOLITUDES

1. The Voyager (Spanish)
2. “I have walked many roads” (Spanish)
3. “The plaza and the burning orange trees” (Spanish)
4. On the Burial of a Friend (Spanish)
5. Childhood Memory (Spanish)
6. “It was a bright afternoon” (Spanish)
7. “The languid lemon tree” (Spanish)
8. Shores of the Duero (Spanish)
9. “A labyrinth of narrow streets” (Spanish)
10. “I go dreaming along roads” (Spanish)
11. Cante hondo (Spanish)
12. “The street in shadow” (Spanish)
13. “You slip away” (Spanish)
14. Horizon (Spanish)

ON THE ROAD

1. “The clock was striking twelve” (Spanish)
2. “Over the bitter land” (Spanish)
3. “The sun is a globe of fire” (Spanish)
4. “O figures in the courtyard” (Spanish)
5. “A few canvases of memory” (Spanish)
6. “Moss is growing in the shadowy plaza” (Spanish)
7. “The fire coals of a violet twilight” (Spanish)
8. “My love? Tell me, do you remember” (Spanish)
9. “One day we sat down by the road” (Spanish)
10. “A young face one day appears” (Spanish)

SONGS

1. “The corroded and greenish hull” (Spanish)
2. “The dream below the sun” (Spanish)

JOKES, FANTASIES, NOTES: THE GREAT INVENTIONS

1. The Waterwheel (Spanish)
2. The Gallows (Spanish)
3. Flies (Spanish)
4. Elegy for a Madrigal (Spanish)
5. Garden (Spanish)
6. Bad Dreams (Spanish)
7. Tedium (Spanish)
8. “The clock was clanging one” (Spanish)
9. Advice (Spanish)
10. Gloss (Spanish)
11. “Last night while I was sleeping” (Spanish)
12. “Has my heart gone to sleep?” (Spanish)

GALLERIES

1. “The torn cloud, the rainbow” (Spanish)
2. “And he was the demon of my dream” (Spanish)
3. “From the doorsill of a dream” (Spanish)
4. “Those children in a row” (Spanish)
5. “Stained by earlier days” (Spanish)
6. “The house I loved” (Spanish)
7. “Before the pale canvas of the afternoon” (Spanish)
8. “Tranquil afternoon, almost” (Spanish)
9. “Like Anakreon” (Spanish)
10. “O luminous afternoon!” (Spanish)
11. “It is an ashen and shabby evening” (Spanish)
12. “Will the spellbound world die with you” (Spanish)
13. “Naked is the earth” (Spanish)
14. Field (Spanish)
15. To an Old and Distinguished Gentleman (Spanish)
16. “Yesterday my sorrows” (Spanish)
17. “Perhaps the hand in dreaming” (Spanish)
18. “You will know yourself” (Spanish)
19. “Below the laurel tree” (Spanish)

MISCELLANEOUS

1. “Over coarse stone in the middle of the square” (Spanish)
2. Winter Sun (Spanish)

FIELDS OF CASTILLA (1907–1917)

1. Portrait (Spanish)
2. On the Banks of the Duero (Spanish)
3. In Spanish Lands (Spanish)
4. “The poorhouse” (Spanish)
5. “Guadarrama, is it you, old friend?” (Spanish)
6. “The thousand waters of April” (Spanish)
7. A Madman (Spanish)
8. Autumn Dawning (Spanish)
9. The Train (Spanish)
10. Summer Night (Spanish)
11. Fields of Soria (Spanish)
12. The Land of Alvargonzález (Spanish)
13. To a Dry Elm (Spanish)
14. Roads (Spanish)
15. “Lord, now what I loved most you tore from me” (Spanish)
16. “Hope says” (Spanish)
17. “There in the highlands” (Spanish)
18. “I dreamt you were guiding me” (Spanish)
19. “One summer night” (Spanish)
20. “As snow was melting” (Spanish)
21. “Here in the fields of my homeland” (Spanish)
22. To José María Palacio (Spanish)
23. Another Trip (Spanish)
24. Poem About a Day (Spanish)
25. November 1913 (Spanish)
26. Out of the Ephemeral Past (Spanish)
27. Lament for His Virtues and Verses on the Death of Don Guido (Spanish)
28. Proverbs and Songs (Spanish)
29. Parables (Spanish)
30. My Clown (Spanish)

PRAISES

1. To Don Francisco Giner de los Ríos (Spanish)
2. A Young Spain (Spanish)
3. My Poets (Spanish)

NEW SONGS (1917-1930)

1. Notes (Spanish)
2. Toward the Lowlands (Spanish)
3. Galleries (Spanish)
4. Highland Songs (Spanish)
5. Songs (Spanish)
6. Songs of the Upper Duero (Spanish)
7. Proverbs and Songs (Spanish)
8. Parergon (Spanish)
9. Glossing Ronsard and Other Rhymes (Spanish)
10. Sonnets (Spanish)
11. Old Songs (Spanish)

FROM AN APOCRYPHAL SONGBOOK: ABEL MARTÍN

1. My eyes in the mirror (Spanish)
2. Primaveral (Spanish)
3. Rose of Fire (Spanish)
4. From Advices, Verses, Notes (Spanish)
5. “In dreams he saw himself” (Spanish)
6. “Let us be confident” (Spanish)
7. To the Great Zero (Spanish)

FROM AN APOCRYPHAL SONGBOOK: JUAN DE MAIRENA

1. Abel Martín’s Last Lamentations (Spanish)
2. Siesta (Spanish)
3. In the Manner of Juan de Mairena (Spanish)
4. Songs to Guiomar (Spanish)
5. Other Songs to Guiomar (Spanish)

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS

1. Notes and Songs (Spanish)
2. Sierra Note (Spanish)
3. Notes, Parables, Proverbs and Songs (Spanish)
4. Three Songs Sent to Unamuno in 1913 (Spanish)
5. Dawn Songs (Spanish)
6. Autumn (Spanish)

APOCRYPHAL SONGBOOK

1. Twelve Poets Who Might Have Existed (Spanish)
2. Goodbye (Spanish)
3. Sonnet (Spanish)

POEMS OF THE WAR (1936-1939)

1. Spring (Spanish)
2. The Poet Recalls the Lands of Soria (Spanish)
3. Dawning in Valencia (Spanish)
4. The Death of the Wounded Child (Spanish)
5. “From sea to sea between us is the war” (Spanish)
6. “Again our yesterday” (Spanish)
7. Song (Spanish)
8. The Crime Was in Granada (Spanish)
9. Today’s Meditation (Spanish)
10. “I will give you my song” (Spanish)
11. Songs (Spanish)
12. “These blue days” (Spanish)

Foreword

Though I never knew Antonio Machado well my recollections of him are so sharp as to be almost painful. I remember him as a large sad fumbling man dressed like an oldfashioned schoolteacher. Stiff wing collar none too clean; spots on his clothes, and the shine of wear on the black broadcloth. He had a handsomely deep voice. Always when I think of him he is wearing the dusty derby he wore the evening we walked around Segovia in the moonlight.

Segovia is one of the walled mountain towns of old Castilla. It is full of arches. A Roman aqueduct stalks across the city. There are Romanesque façades, squat towers, broad portals, all built of an umber and honeycolored stone. Every detail of the carved stonework stood out sharp in the flaming moonlight.

We had been sitting in the stale old casino that smelt of anise and horsehair sofas and provincial ennui. We had sat watching a game of billiards and talking about Whitman and Emily Dickinson until suddenly we had to get out of doors. A couple of other men joined us for a stroll around the city by moonlight. It was unbelievably beautiful. I remember how pleased Machado was with the names of the streets and the churches. San Millan de las Brujas—Saint Millan of the Witches—delighted him particularly.

Machado himself was living then in a shabby lodging on a street called Calle de los Desamparados—Street of Abandoned Children. He couldn’t have had an address more characteristic of him. A lonely widower, in his forties I suppose, he gave the impression of being helpless in life’s contests and struggles, a man without defenses. There was no trace of worldliness about him. Long ago he had accepted the pain and ignominy of being what he was, a poet, a man who had given up all hope of reward to live for the delicately imagined mood, the counterpoint of words, the accurately recording ear.

Machado el Bueno, his friends called him. Indeed he struck me as good in the best sense of the word, a man entirely of one piece. He followed his chosen calling with the simplicity and abnegation of a monk. Early he must have vowed himself to poverty.

His Campos de Castilla particularly made a great impression on me. I was a gangling foureyed young hobbledehoy just out of college, making my first independent effort to master a foreign language. Somebody had given me an excellent piece of advice: when you are trying to learn a foreign language always read the poetry before you try to learn the prose. Of course poetry that’s worth its salt carries the essence of the language.