Songs
Green parrot,
royal lorikeet,
say what you know
to the parting sun.
*
I have a memory, Guiomar,
all bristling with thorns,
a leaf of cactus fruit.
*
When the sky thunders
(how beautiful
for blasphemy!)
and there is smoke on the sea.
*
In the high wilderness
I see some cold poplars
and a white road.
*
In that stone
(lands of the moon!)
can no one remember them?
*
Gusts of February
lash the lemon trees.
I don’t sleep so I won’t dream.
—Antonio Machado (translated by Willis Barnstone)
—found in Border of a Dream: Selected Poems of Antonio Machado (2004; this poem originally published posthumously in Poesías de guerra de Antonio Machado, 1961)