Portrait
Recollections of my infancy: a patio in Seville,
a light-filled garden, its lemon tree in fruit;
my youth: some twenty years spent in Castile;
my history: a few things best left mute.
Never a seducer Mañara* or Bradomín* —
you know by now my desultory style of dress –
Cupid’s arrow struck me nonetheless
and I loved what refuge women give.
Coursing through my veins, Jacobin blood;
my verse, however, springs from a quiet source.
More than a conventional doctrinaire
I, in the best sense, am good.
I adore beauty and in modern aesthetics
I cut the old roses of Ronsard’s garden;
I have no love for the rouge of current cosmetics
nor a part in the new songsters’ carefree warble.
I despise the ballads of the hollow tenor voices
and the cricket choir that serenades the moon;
I pause to distinguish voices from their echoes
and I listen, amid the voices, to only one.
Classic or romantic? I cannot tell.
I bequeath my verse as the captain leaves his sword,
not esteemed for the armourer’s learnédskill
but for the manly hand that brandished it.
I hold converse with the man forever with me.
Who speaks alone, hope to speak to God one day.
My soliloquy is a chat with this good friend
who taught me the secret of philanthropy.
And in the end my debt to you is nothing.
You owe me what is written. I work and pay
for the house I live in and the clothes I wear,
the bed I lie on and the bread I eat.
And when the day of final going comes,
and the ship, never to return, is at the quay,
you’ll find me on the deck, light of gear,
almost naked, like the sons of the sea.
[Mi infancia son recuerdos de un patio de Sevilla … XCVII]
The Traveler
He is with us in the shady familiar room,
the dear brother we saw –
in the childhood dream of a clear day –
departing for a distant place.
Now, already, his temples are silvered,
a tuft of grey above the narrow brow;
and his cold, uneasy stare
reveals a soul almost wholly gone.
The old and withered park
is stript bare of its autumn leaves.
The evening composes itself
behind damp panes and in the mirror’s depth.
The face of the brother is softly lighted.
Elegant disillusions
gilded by the declining evening?
Longing for another life and other years?
Does he lament the loss of youth?
Far away – dead – lies the wretched vixen.
Is he afraid of pale, unlived youth
that now must sing before his door?
Does he smile to the golden sun
of the land of a dream not yet found;
and see his ship cross the resounding sea,
it’s white sail billowed with light and wind?
He has seen the whirl of the sere, autumnal leaves,
the odoriferous branches
of the eucalyptus, the rosebushes reveal
again their white roses.
And this grief, of longing or distrust,
checks the trembling of a tear,
and a residue of virile hypocrisy
is stamped on his pallid face.
The grave portrait on the wall is still clear.
We digress. In the sadness of the home
beats the tick-tock of the clock.
We are all silent.
[Está en la sala familiar, sombría … Soledades I]
De Campos de Castilla (1907-1917)
XCVII
(Retrato)
Mi infancia son recuerdos de un patio de Sevilla,
y un huerto claro donde madura el limonero;
mi juventud, veinte años en tierra de Castilla;
mi historia, algunos casos que recordar no quiero.
Ni un seductor Mañara ni un Bradomín he sido
—ya conocéis mi torpe aliño indumentario—,
mas recibí la flecha que me asignó Cupido,
y amé cuanto ellas pueden tener de hospitalario.
Hay en mis venas gotas de sangre jacobina,
pero mi verso brota de manantial sereno;
y, más que un hombre al uso que sabe su doctrina,
soy, en el buen sentido de la palabra, bueno.
Adoro la hermosura, y en la moderna estética
corté las viejas rosas del huerto de Ronsard;
mas no amo los afeites de la actual cosmética,
ni soy un ave de esas del nuevo gay-trinar.
Desdeño las romanzas de los tenores huecos
y el coro de los grillos que cantan a la luna.
A distinguir me paro las voces de los ecos,
y escucho solamente, entre las voces, una.
¿Soy clásico o romántico? No sé. Dejar quisiera
mi verso, como deja el capitán su espada:
famosa por la mano viril que la blandiera,
no por el docto oficio del forjador preciada.
Converso con el hombre que siempre va conmigo
—quien habla solo espera hablar a Dios un día—;
mi soliloquio es plática con este buen amigo
que me enseñó el secreto de la filantropía.
Y al cabo, nada os debo; debeisme cuanto he escrito.
A mi trabajo acudo, con mi dinero pago
el traje que me cubre y la mansión que habito,
el pan que me alimenta y el lecho en donde yago.
Y cuando llegue el día del último viaje
y esté al partir la nave que nunca ha de tornar,
me encontraréis a bordo ligero de equipaje,
casi desnudo, como los hijos de la mar.
De Soledades (1899-1907)
I
El viajero
Está en la sala familiar, sombría,
y entre nosotros, el querido hermano
que en el sueño infantil de un claro día
vimos partir hacia un país lejano.
Hoy tiene ya las sienes plateadas,
un gris mechón sobre la angosta frente;
y la fría inquietud de sus miradas
revela un alma casi toda ausente.
Deshójanse las copas otoñales
del parque mustio y viejo.
La tarde, tras los húmedos cristales,
se pinta, y en el fondo del espejo.
El rostro del hermano se ilumina
suavemente. ¿Floridos desengaños
dorados por la tarde que declina?
¿Ansias de vida nueva en nuevos años?
¿Lamentará la juventud perdida?
Lejos quedó —la pobre loba— muerta.
¿La blanca juventud nunca vivida
teme, que ha de cantar ante su puerta?
¿Sonríe al sol de oro,
de la tierra de un sueño no encontrada;
y ve su nave hender el mar sonoro,
de viento y luz la blanca vela hinchada?
Él ha visto las hojas otoñales,
amarillas, rodar, las olorosas
ramas del eucalipto, los rosales
que enseñan otra vez sus blancas rosas…
Y este dolor que añora o desconfía
el temblor de una lágrima reprime,
y un resto de viril hipocresía
en el semblante pálido se imprime.
Serio retrato en la pared clarea
todavía. Nosotros divagamos.
En la tristeza del hogar golpea
el tic-tac del reloj. Todos callamos.
Translator: Michael Smith has translated, much in collaboration with his friend and Spanish scholar, Luis Ingelmo, a wide range of Spanish-language writers including Federico García Lorca, Pablo Neruda, Miguel Hernández, Gerardo Diego, Luis Cernuda, and Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, Claudio Rodríguez, Rosalía de Castro, along with the two Spanish masters of the baroque, Francisco de Quevedo (Dedalus) and Luis de Góngora (Anvil Poetry). With the Peruvian scholar Valentino Gianuzzi, he has translated the complete poems of César Vallejo in four volumes (Shearsman Books). Next year his translation with (Luis Ingelmo) of the Renaissance poet, Fernando de Herrera, will be published by Shearsman Books as well as a collection of new poems entitled Poems to the Dead & Other Poems. Parlor Press (USA) will also publish Magnetic Brackets by the contemporary Spanish poet, Jesús Losada. His achievement in translation was acknowledged in 2001 when he was awarded the European Academy Medal for Poetry. He has also published several volumes of his own poetry, which itself has been widely translated – a collected edition of his work has been published by Shearsman Books.
