spring of misfortune,
grainlands still
unopened, secret storehouses
of blue and tin, ovaries, doors, closed
arches, depths
that tried to give birth, all was guarded
by triangular guards with guns,
by sad-rat-colored priests,
by lackeys of the huge-rumped king.
Tough Spain, land of apple orchards and pines,
your idle lords ordered you:
Do not sow the land, do not give birth to mines,
do not breed cows, but contemplate
the tombs, visit each year
the monument of Columbus the sailor, neigh
speeches with monkeys come from America,
equal in “social position” and in putrefaction.
Do not build schools, do not break open earth’s
crust with plows, do not fill the granaries
with abundance of wheat: pray, beasts, pray,
for a god with a rump as huge as the king’s rump
awaits you: “There you will have soup, my brethren.”
TRADITION
In the nights of Spain, through the old gardens,
tradition, covered with dead snot,
spouting pus and pestilence, strolled
with its tail in the fog, ghostly and fantastic,
dressed in asthma and bloody hollow frock coats,
and its face with sunken staring eyes
was green slugs eating graves,
and its toothless mouth each night bit
the unborn flower, the secret mineral,
and it passed with its crown of green thistles
sowing vague deadmen’s bones and daggers.
MADRID (1936)
Madrid, alone and solemn, July surprised you with your joy
of humble honeycomb:
bright was your street, bright was your dream.
A black vomit
of generals, a wave
of rabid cassocks
poured between your knees
their swampy waters, their rivers of spittle.
With eyes still wounded by sleep,
with guns and stones, Madrid, newly wounded,
you defended yourself. You ran
through the streets
leaving trails of your holy blood,
rallying and calling with an oceanic voice,
with a face changed forever
by the light of blood, like an avenging
mountain, like a whistling
star of knives.
When into the dark barracks, when into the sacristies
of treason your burning sword entered,
there was only silence of dawn, there was
only your passage of flags,
and an honorable drop of blood in your smile.
I EXPLAIN A FEW THINGS
You will ask: And where are the lilacs?
And the metaphysical blanket of poppies?
And the rain that often struck
your words filling them
with holes and birds?
I am going to tell you all that is happening to me.
I lived in a quarter
of Madrid, with bells,
with clocks, with trees.
From there one could see
the lean face of Spain
like an ocean of leather.
My house was called
the house of flowers, because it was bursting
everywhere with geraniums: it was
a fine house
with dogs and children.
Raúl, do you remember?
Do you remember, Rafael?
Federico,* do you remember
under the ground,
do you remember my house with balconies where
June light smothered flowers in your mouth?
Brother, brother!
Everything
was great shouting, salty goods,
heaps of throbbing bread,
markets of my Argüelles quarter with its statue
like a pale inkwell among the haddock:
the olive oil reached the ladles,
a deep throbbing
of feet and hands filled the streets,
meters, liters, sharp
essence of life,
fish piled up,
pattern of roofs with cold sun on which
the vane grows weary,
frenzied fine ivory of the potatoes,
tomatoes stretching to the sea.
and one morning the fires
came out of the earth
devouring people,
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
Bandits with airplanes and with Moors,
bandits with rings and duchesses,
bandits with black-robed friars blessing
came through the air to kill children,
and through the streets the blood of the children
ran simply, like children’s blood.
Jackals that the jackal would spurn,
stones that the dry thistle would bite spitting,
vipers that vipers would abhor!
Facing you I have seen the blood
of Spain rise up
to drown you in a single wave
of pride and knives!
Treacherous
generals:
look at my dead house,
look at broken Spain:
but from each dead house comes burning metal
instead of flowers,
but from each hollow of Spain
Spain comes forth,
but from each dead child comes a gun with eyes,
but from each crime are born bullets
that will one day seek out in you
where the heart lies.
You will ask: why does your poetry
not speak to us of sleep, of the leaves,
of the great volcanoes of your native land?
Come and see the blood in the streets,
come and see
the blood in the streets,
come and see the blood
in the streets!
SONG FOR THE MOTHERS OF SLAIN MILITIAMEN
They have not died! They are in the midst
of the gunpowder,
standing, like burning wicks.
Their pure shadows have gathered
in the copper-colored meadowland
like a curtain of armored wind,
like a barricade the color of fury,
like the invisible heart of heaven itself.
Mothers! They are standing in the wheat,
tall as the depth of noon,
dominating the great plains!
They are a black-voiced bell stroke
that across the bodies murdered by steel
is ringing out victory.
Sisters like the fallen
dust, shattered
hearts,
have faith in your dead.
They are not only roots
beneath the bloodstained stones,
not only do their poor demolished bones
definitively till the soil,
but their mouths still bite dry powder
and attack like iron oceans, and still
their upraised fists deny death.
Because from so many bodies an invisible life
rises up. Mothers, banners, sons!
A single body as alive as life:
a face of broken eyes keeps vigil in the darkness
with a sword filled with earthly hopes!
Put aside
your mantles of mourning, join all
your tears until you make them metal:
for there we strike by day and by night,
there we kick by day and by night,
there we spit by day and by night
until the doors of
hatred fall!
I do not forget your misfortunes, I know
your sons,
and if I am proud of their deaths,
I am also proud of their lives.
Their laughter
flashed in the silent workshops,
their steps in the subway
sounded at my side each day, and next
to the oranges from the Levant, to the nets from the South, next
to the ink from the printing presses, over the cement
of the architecture
I have seen their hearts flame with fire and energy.
And just as in your hearts, mothers,
there is in my heart so much mourning and so much death
that it is like a forest
drenched by the blood that killed their smiles,
and into it enter the rabid mists of vigilance with the
rending loneliness of the days.
But
more than curses for the thirsty hyenas, the bestial
death rattle,
that howls from Africa its filthy privileges,
more than anger, more than scorn, more than weeping,
mothers pierced by anguish and death,
look at the heart of the noble day that is born,
and know that your dead ones smile from the earth
raising their fists above the wheat.
WHAT SPAIN WAS LIKE
Spain was tense and lean, a daily
drum of opaque sound,
plainland and eagle’s nest, silence
of scourged inclemency.
How, even to weeping, even to the soul,
I love your hard earth, your humble bread,
your humble people, how even to the deep seat
of my existence there is the lost flower of your wrinkled
villages, motionless in time,
and your mineral countrysides
extended in moon and age
and devoured by an empty god.
All your structures, your animal
isolation next to your intelligence
surrounded by the abstract stones of silence,
your bitter wine, your smooth
wine, your violent
and delicate vineyards.
Ancestral stone, pure among the regions
of the world, Spain crossed
by bloods and metals, blue and victorious
proletarian of petals and bullets, uniquely
alive and somnolent and resounding.
Huélamo, Carrascosa,*
Alpedrete, Buitrago,
Palencia, Arganda, Galve,
Galapagar, Villalba.
Peñarrubia, Cedrillas,
Alcocer, Tamurejo,
Aguadulce, Pedrera,
Fuente Palmera, Colmenar, Sepúlveda.
Carcabuey, Fuencaliente,
Linares, Solana del Pino,
Carcelén, Alatox,
Mahora, Valdeganda.
Yeste, Riopar, Segorbe,
Orihuela, Montalbo,
Alcaraz, Caravaca,
Almendralejo, Castejón de Monegros.
Palma del Rio, Peralta,
Granadella, Quintana
de la Serena, Atienza, Barahona,
Navalmoral, Oropesa.
Alborea, Monóvar,
Almansa, San Benito,
Moratalla, Montesa,
Torre Baja, Aldemuz.
Cevico Navero, Cevico de la Torre,
Albalate de las Nogueras,
Jabaloyas, Teruel,
Camporrobles, la Alberca.
Pozo Amargo, Candeleda,
Pedroñeras, Campillo de Altobuey,
Loranca de Tajuña, Puebla de la Mujer Muerta,
Torre la Cárcel, Játiva, Alcoy.
Pueblo de Obando, Villar del Rey,
Beloraga, Brihuega,
Cerina, Villacañas, Palomas,
Navalcán, Henarejos, Albatana.
Torredonjimeno, Trasparga,
Agramón, Crevillente,
Poveda de la Sierra, Pedernoso,
Alcolea de Cinca, Matallanos.
Ventosa del Rao, Alba de Tormes,
Horcajo Medianero, Piedrahita,
Minglanilla, Navamorcuende, Navalperal,
Navalcarnero, Navalmorales, Jorquera.
Argora, Torremocha, Argecilla,
Ojos Negros, Salvacañete, Uriel,
Laguna Seca, Cañamares, Salorino,
Aldea Quemada, Pesquera de Duero.
Fuenteovejuna, Alpedrete,
Torrejón, Benaguacil,
Valverde de Júcar, Vallanca,
Hiendelaencina, Robledo de Chavela.
Miñogalindo, Ossa de Montiel,
Méntrida, Valdepeñas, Titaguas,
Almodóvar, Gestalgar, Valdemoro,
Almoradiel, Orgaz.
ARRIVAL IN MADRID OF THE INTERNATIONAL BRIGADE
One morning in a cold month,
an agonizing month, stained by mud and smoke,
a month without knees, a sad month of siege and misfortune,
when through the wet windows of my house
the African jackals could be heard
howling with rifles and teeth covered with blood, then,
when we had no more hope than a dream of powder,
when we already thought
that the world was filled only with devouring monsters
and furies,
then, breaking the frost of the cold Madrid month,
in the fog
of the dawn
I saw with these eyes that I have, with this heart
that looks,
I saw arrive the clear, the masterful fighters
of the thin and hard and mellow and ardent stone brigade.
It was the anguished time when women
wore absence like a frightful coal,
and Spanish death, more acrid and sharper than other deaths,
filled fields up to then honored by wheat.
Through the streets the broken blood of man joined
the water that emerges from the ruined hearts of homes:
the bones of the shattered children, the heartrending
black-clad silence of the mothers, the eyes
forever shut of the defenseless,
were like sadness and loss, were like a spit-upon garden,
were faith and flower forever murdered.
Comrades,
then
I saw you,
and my eyes are even now filled with pride
because through the misty morning I saw you reach
the pure brow of Castile
silent and firm
like bells before dawn,
filled with solemnity and blue-eyed, come from far,
far away,
come from your corners, from your lost fatherlands,
from your dreams,
covered with burning gentleness and guns
to defend the Spanish city in which besieged liberty
could fall and die bitten by the beasts.
Brothers, from now on
let your pureness and your strength, your solemn story
be known by children and by men, by women and by old men,
let it reach all men without hope, let it go down to the mines
corroded by sulphuric air,
let it mount the inhuman stairways of the slave, let all the stars,
let all the flowers of Castile
and of the world
write your name and your bitter struggle
and your victory strong and earthen as a red oak.
Because you have revived with your sacrifice
lost faith, absent heart, trust in the earth,
and through your abundance, through your nobility, through
your dead,
as if through a valley of harsh bloody rocks,
flows an immense river with doves of steel and of hope.
BATTLE OF THE JARAMA RIVER*
Between t
he earth and the drowned platinum
of olive orchards and Spanish dead,
Jarama, pure dagger, you have resisted
the wave of the cruel.
There, from Madrid, came men
with hearts made golden by gunpowder,
like a loaf of ashes and resistance,
there they came.
Jarama, you were between iron and smoke
like a branch of fallen crystal,
like a long line of medals
for the victorious.
Neither caverns of burning substance,
nor angry explosive flights,
nor artillery of turbid darkness
controlled your waters.
The bloodthirsty drank
your waters, face up they drank water:
Spanish water and olive fields
filled them with oblivion.
For a second of water and time the river bed
of the blood of Moors and traitors
throbbed in your light like the fish
of a bitter fountain.
The bitter wheat of your people was
all bristling with metal and bones,
formidable and germinal like the noble
land that they defended.
Jarama, to speak of your regions
of splendor and dominion, my mouth is not
adequate, and my hand is pale:
there rest your dead.
There rest your mournful sky,
your flinty peace, your starry stream,
and the eternal eyes of your people
watch over your shores.
ALMERÍA*
A bowl for the bishop, a crushed and bitter bowl,
a bowl with remnants of iron, with ashes, with tears,
a sunken bowl, with sobs and fallen walls,
a bowl for the bishop, a bowl of Almería
blood.
A bowl for the banker, a bowl with cheeks
of children from the happy South, a bowl
with explosions, with wild waters and ruins and fright,