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Category: Antonio Machado

  • The Wind, One Brilliant Day

    By Antonio Machado

    The wind, one brilliant day, called
    to my soul with an odor of jasmine.

    ‘In return for the odor of my jasmine,
    I’d like all the odor of your roses.’

    ‘I have no roses; all the flowers
    in my garden are dead.’

    ‘Well then, I’ll take the withered petals
    and the yellow leaves and the waters of the fountain.’

    the wind left. And I wept. And I said to myself:
    ‘What have you done with the garden that was entrusted to you?’

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  • Is my soul asleep?

    By Antonio Machado

    Is my soul asleep?
    Have those beehives that work
    in the night stopped? And the water-
    wheel of thought, is it
    going around now, cups
    empty, carrying only shadows?

    No, my soul is not asleep.
    It is awake, wide awake.
    It neither sleeps nor dreams, but watches,
    its eyes wide open
    far-off things, and listens
    at the shores of the great silence.

    From The Soul Is Here For Its Own Joy, edited by Robert Bly

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  • Sorrow, it is not true that I know you

    By Antonio Machado

    Sorrow, it is not true that I know you;
    you are the nostalgia for a good life,
    and the aloneness of the soul in shadow,
    the sailing ship without wreck and without guide.

    Like an abandoned dog who cannot find
    a smell or a track and roams
    along the roads, with no road, like
    the child who in a night of the fair

    gets lost among the crowd,
    and the air is dusty, and the candles
    fluttering,-astounded, his heart
    weighed down by music and by pain;

    that’s how I am, drunk, sad by nature,
    a mad and lunar guitarist, a poet,
    and an ordinary man lost in dreams,
    searching constantly for God among the mists.

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  • In our souls…

    By Antonio Machado

    In our souls everything
    moves guided by a mysterious hand.
    We know nothing of our own souls
    that are ununderstandable and say nothing.

    The deepest words
    of the wise man teach us
    the same as the whistle of the wind when it blows
    or the sound of the water when it is flowing.

    Quoted in The Enlightened Heart, edited by Stephen Mitchell

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  • Wanderer

    By Antonio Machado

    Wanderer, the road is your
    footsteps, nothing else;
    wanderer, there is no path,
    you lay down a path in walking.

    In walking, you lay down a path
    and when turning around
    you see the road you’ll
    never step on again.
    Wanderer, path there is none,
    only tracks on the ocean foam.

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  • With the morning dew…

    By Antonio Machado

    With the morning dew,
    stand forth from the mists
    white peaks, green meadows.
    The sun on the oak groves!
    The larks climb so far
    they melt into sky.
    Who feathered the fields?
    Who made wings of wild earth?
    Above the tall ranges,
    on broad sunlit wings the eagle rides the wind.
    Above the sharp peak
    where the river rises,
    the turquoise lake,
    the ravines deep in pines,
    above twenty hamlets.
    and a hundred roads
    Mistress eagle, where bound
    so early in the morning,
    so steadily flapping down highways of air?

    From Selected Poems, translated by A. S. Trueblood

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  • Last night I had a dream…

    By Antonio Machado

    Last night I had a dream-
    a blessed illusion it was-
    I dreamt of a fountain flowing
    deep down in my heart.
    Water, by what hidden channels
    have you come, tell me, to me,
    welling up with new life
    I never tasted before?
    Last night I had a dream-
    a blessed illusion it was-
    I dreamt of a hive at work
    deep down in my heart.
    Within were the golden bees
    straining out the bitter past
    to make sweet-tasting honey,
    and white honeycomb.
    Last night I had a dream-
    a blessed illusion it was-
    I dreamt of a hot sun shining
    deep down in my heart.
    The heat was in the scorching
    as from a fiery hearth;
    the sun in the light it shed
    and the tears it brought to the eyes.
    Last night I had a dream-
    a blessed illusion it was-
    I dreamed it was God I’d found
    deep down in my heart.

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