Spain 1937

Yesterday all the past. The language of size
Spreading to China along the trade-routes; the diffusion 
   	  Of the counting-frame and the cromlech;
Yesterday the shadow-reckoning in the sunny climates.

Yesterday the assessment of insurance by cards,
The divination of water; yesterday the invention 
  	   Of cartwheels and clocks, the taming of
Horses. Yesterday the bustling world of the navigators.

Yesterday the abolition of fairies and giants,
The fortress like a motionless eagle eyeing the valley, 
		The chapel built in the forest;
Yesterday the carving of angels and alarming gargoyles.

The trial of heretics among the columns of stone; 
Yesterday the theological feuds in the taverns
		And the miraculous cure at the fountain;
Yesterday the Sabbath of witches; but to-day the struggle.

Yesterday the installation of dynamos and turbines, 
The construction of railways in the colonial desert;
		Yesterday the classic lecture
On the origin of Mankind. But to-day the struggle.

Yesterday the belief in the absolute value of Greece, 
The fall of the curtain upon the death of a hero;
		Yesterday the prayer to the sunset
And the adoration of madmen. But to-day the struggle.

As the poet whispers, startled among the pines, 
Or where the loose waterfall sings compact, or upright
		On the crag by the leaning tower:
'0 my vision. 0 send me the luck of the sailor.'

And the investigator peers through his instruments 
At the inhuman provinces, the virile bacillus
		Or enormous Jupiter finished:
'But the lives of my friends. I inquire. I inquire.'

And the poor in their fireless lodgings, dropping the sheets 
Of the evening paper: 'Our day is our loss. 0 show us
		History the operator, the 
Organizer, Time the refreshing river.'

And the nations combine each cry, invoking the life 
That shapes the individual belly and orders
		The private nocturnal terror:
'Did you not found the city state of the sponge,'

'Raise the vast military empires of the shark 
And the tiger, establish the robin's plucky canton?
		Intervene, 0 descend as a dove or 
A furious papa or a mild engineer, but descend.'

And the life, if it answers at all, replies from the heart 
And the eyes and the lungs, from the shops and squares of the city:
		'0 no, I am not the mover; 
Not to-day; not to you. To you, I'm the

'Yes-man, the bar-companion, the easily-duped; 
I am whatever you do. I am your vow to be
		Good, your humorous story. 
I am your business voice. I am your marriage.

'What's your proposal? To build the just city? I will. 
I agree. Or is it the suicide pact, the romantic
		Death? Very well, I accept, for 
I am your choice, your decision. Yes, I am Spain.'

Many have heard it on remote peninsulas, 
On sleepy plains, in the aberrant fisherman's islands
		Or the corrupt heart of the city,
Have heard and migrated like gulls or the seeds of a flower.

They clung like birds to the long expresses that lurch 
Through the unjust lands, through the night, through the alpine tunnel;
		They floated over the oceans; 
They walked the passes. All presented their lives.

On that arid square, that fragment nipped off from hot 
Africa, soldered so crudely to inventive Europe;
		On that tableland scored by rivers,
Our thoughts have bodies; the menacing shapes of our fever

Are precise and alive. For the fears which made us respond 
To the medicine ad, and the brochure of winter cruises
		Have become invading battalions;
And our faces, the institute-face, the chain-store, the ruin

Are projecting their greed as the firing squad and the bomb. 
Madrid is the heart. Our moments of tenderness blossom
		As the ambulance and the sandbag; 
Our hours of friendship into a people's army.

To-morrow, perhaps the future. The research on fatigue 
And the movement of packers; the gradual exploring of all the
		Octaves of radiation;
To-morrow the enlarging of consciousness by diet and breathing.

To-morrow the rediscovery of romantic love,
The photographing of ravens; all the fun under 
		Liberty's masterful shadow;
To-morrow the hour of the pageant-master and the musician,

The beautiful roar of the chorus under the dome;
To-morrow the exchanging of tips on the breeding of terriers, 
		The eager election of chairmen
By the sudden forest of hands. But to-day the struggle.

To-morrow for the young poets exploding like bombs)
The walks by the lake, the weeks of perfect communion; 
		To-morrow the bicycle races
Through the suburbs on summer evenings. But to-day the struggle.

Today the deliberate increase in the chances of death,
The conscious acceptance of guilt in the necessary murder; 
		To-day the expending of powers
On the flat ephemeral pamphlet and the boring meeting.

To-day the makeshift consolations: the shared cigarette,
The cards in the candle-lit barn, and the scraping concert, 
		The masculine jokes; to-day the
Fumbled and unsatisfactory embrace before hurting.

The stars are dead. The animals will not look.
We are left alone with our day, and the time is short, and 
		History to the defeated
May say alas but cannot help or pardon.

- Wystan Hugh Auden - 

El once

   El río invierte el curso de su corriente.
El agua de las cascadas sube.
La gente empieza a caminar retrocediendo.
Los caballos caminan hacia atrás.
Los militares deshacen lo desfilado.
Las balas salen de las carnes.
Las balas entran en los cañones.
Los oficiales enfundan sus pistolas.
La corriente se devuelve por los cables.
La corriente penetra por los enchufes.
Los torturados dejan de agitarse.
Los torturados cierran sus bocas.
Los campos de concentración se vacían.
Aparecen los desaparecidos.
Los muertos salen de sus tumbas.
Los aviones vuelan hacia atrás
Los rockets suben hacia los aviones.
Allende dispara.
Las llamas se apagan.
Se saca el casco.
La Moneda se reconstituye íntegra.
Su cráneo se recompone.
Sale a un balcón.
Allende retrocede hasta Tomás Moro.
Los detenidos salen de espalda de los estadios.
11 de Septiembre.
Regresan aviones con refugiados.
Chile es un país democrático.
Las fuerzas armadas respetan la constitución.
Los militares vuelven a sus cuarteles.
Renace Neruda.
Vuelve en una ambulancia a Isla Negra.
Le duele la próstata. Escribe.
Víctor Jara toca la guitarra. Canta.
Los discursos entran en las bocas.
El tirano abraza a Prat.
Desaparece. Prat revive.
Los cesantes son recontratados.
Los obreros desfilan cantando
¡Venceremos!   - Gonzalo Millán -

Snake

A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,
To drink there. 

In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-tree
I came down the steps with my pitcher
And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before
me. 

 

He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom
And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of
the stone trough
And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,
i o And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,
He sipped with his straight mouth,
Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,
Silently. 

 

Someone was before me at my water-trough,
And I, like a second comer, waiting.

He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,
And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,
And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,
And stooped and drank a little more,
Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth
On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.

The voice of my education said to me
He must be killed,
For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous. 

 

And voices in me said, If you were a man
You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off. 

 

But must I confess how I liked him,
How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough
And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,
Into the burning bowels of this earth? 

 

Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him? 

Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him? Was it humility, to feel so honoured?
I felt so honoured.

 

And yet those voices:
If you were not afraid, you would kill him!

 

And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid, But even so, honoured still more
That he should seek my hospitality
From out the dark door of the secret earth. 

 

He drank enough
And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,
And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black,
Seeming to lick his lips,
And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,
And slowly turned his head,
And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream,
Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round
And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face. 

 

And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,
And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered farther,
A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole,
Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after,
Overcame me now his back was turned.

I looked round, I put down my pitcher,
I picked up a clumsy log
And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.

I think it did not hit him,
But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in undignified haste.
Writhed like lightning, and was gone
Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front,
At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.

 

And immediately I regretted it.
I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!
I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education. 

 

And I thought of the albatross
And I wished he would come back, my snake. 

 

For he seemed to me again like a king,
Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,
Now due to be crowned again. 

 

And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords
Of life.
And I have something to expiate:
A pettiness.

- David Herbert Lawrence -

Un serpente venne al mio trogolo
in un giorno caldo bollente, ero in pigiama
io per l’arsura, a bere là.

Nell’ombra densa, dello strano
profumo del grande, scuro carrubo
scesi per gli scalini con la mia brocca
e dovetti aspettare, stare lì a
aspettare, perché lui era arrivato
al trogolo prima di me.
Si spinse giù da una crepa
del muro di terra, nel buio,
e trascinò la sua fiacchezza
giallo bruna e il suo ventre soffice
sull’orlo di pietra del trogolo
e si fermò con la sua gola sopra il
fondo, e dove l’acqua aveva sgocciolato da rubinetto, in
una piccola
pozza di chiarore, sorseggiava con la sua
bocca, piano piano beveva
attraverso le sue gengive, nel suo lungo
corpo fiaccato,
in silenzio.
C’era qualcuno davanti a me al trogolo
E io, secondo venuto, aspettavo.
Alzò la testa dopo aver bevuto, come fa
il bestiame, e mi guardò appena, come fa
il bestiame quando beve
e fece vibrare la sua lingua forcuta
dalle labbra, meditò un po’
e si curvò a bere ancora
bruno come la terra, dorato
come la terra lui figlio delle ardenti
viscere della terra, in quel giorno
di un luglio siciliano, con l’Etna
che fumava.
La voce della mia cultura mi disse
che andava ucciso
perché in Sicilia i serpenti neri neri
sono innocui, e quelli dorati
velenosi.
E voci in me dicevano: se tu fossi
un uomo, prenderesti un bastone e lo faresti
a pezzi, lo finiresti.
Ma devo confessare quanto mi
piaceva, quanto ero felice che lui fosse
venuto come un ospite, quieto, a bere
al mio trogolo, e se ne andasse in pace,
soddisfatto, e senza dire grazie
nelle viscere ardenti della terra?
Era paura, che io non osassi ucciderlo?
O perversione, che desiderassi
tanto parlare con lui?
O umiltà, sentirmi così onorato?
Io mi sentivo onorato, proprio.
Ma ancora quelle voci:
se tu non avessi paura, lo uccideresti.
E ne avevo paura, molta paura in verità
ma anche così onorato ancora di più
che lui avesse cercato la mia ospitalità
dalla porta oscura della terra segreta.
Bevve abbastanza, e alzò
la testa, come se stesse
sognando, come uno un po’ ubriaco,
e vibrò la sua lingua simile a
notte forcuta nell’aria, così nera,
sembrava che si leccasse le labbra
e poi si guardò intorno come un
dio, senza vedere, e lentamente
voltò la testa, molto molto
lentamente, come tre volte
in sogno, cominciò a trascinare la sua lenta
lunghezza curvandosi e si arrampicò
di nuovo sull’argine spezzato
del muro di fronte.
E mentre lui infilava la testa nell’orribile
crepa, mentre lentamente si spingeva su
alzando come può un serpente le spalle, ed entrò
più nell’interno
una specie di orrore, di protesta
contro quel suo ritirarsi dentro l’orrida
crepa nera
deliberatamente andando verso
il buio e lentamente
trascinandovisi, mi vinse,
ora che lui mi dava la schiena.
Mi guardai intorno, posai la mai brocca
presi un informe ceppo
e lo scaglia nel trogolo con gran clamore.
Credo che non lo colpii,
ma d’improvviso la parte di lui
che era rimasta indietro si contrasse
in una fretta non più dignitosa
si contorse come un fulmine, ed entrò
nella crepa buia, al fessura a forma di
labbra di terra nel muro di fronte, che
nell’intenso, fermo mezzogiorno
guardavo fisso, affascinato.
Ed immediatamente mi pentii.
Pensavo: che vile, che volgare, che spregevole
azione. Disprezzai me stesso e le voci
della mia maledetta cultura d’uomo.
Pensai all’albatros
e desiderai che tornasse indietro, lui,
il mio serpente.
Perché ora mi sembrava di nuovo un re,
un re in esilio, senza corona nel mondo delle
ombre, a cui era dovuta ora di nuovo
un’incoronazione.

E così, persi la mia occasione
con uno dei signori della vita.
Ed ho qualcosa da espiare: una
meschinità.

Bavarian Gentians

Not every man has gentians in his house
in soft September, at slow, sad Michaelmas.

Bavarian gentians, big and dark, only dark
darkening the daytime, torch-like, with the smoking blueness of Pluto's
        gloom,
ribbed and torch-like, with their blaze of darkness spread blue
down flattening into points, flattened under the sweep of white day
torch-flower of the blue-smoking darkness, Pluto's dark-blue daze,
black lamps from the halls of Dis, burning dark blue,
giving off darkness, blue darkness, as Demeter's pale lamps give off light,
lead me then, lead the way.

Reach me a gentian, give me a torch!
let me guide myself with the blue, forked torch of this flower
down the darker and darker stairs, where blue is darkened on blueness
even where Persephone goes, just now, from the frosted September
to the sightless realm where darkness is awake upon the dark
and Persephone herself is but a voice
or a darkness invisible enfolded in the deeper dark
of the arms Plutonic, and pierced with the passion of dense gloom,
among the splendor of torches of darkness, shedding darkness on
the lost bride and her groom.

- David Herbert Lawrence -

The Second Coming

 

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

- William Butler Yeats -

 

Il secondo avvento

Ruotando e roteando nella spirale che sempre più si allarga,
Il falco non può udire il falconiere;
Le cose si dissociano; il centro non può reggere;
E la pura anarchia si rovescia sul mondo,
La torbida marea del sangue dilaga, e in ogni dove
Annega il rito dell’innocenza;
I migliori hanno perso ogni fede, e i peggiori
Si gonfiano d’ardore appassionato.

Certo qualche rivelazione è vicina;
Certo s’approssima il Secondo Avvento.
Il Secondo Avvento! E le parole sono appena dette
Che un’immagine immensa sorta dallo Spiritus Mundi
Mi turba la vista; in qualche luogo nelle sabbie del deserto
Una forma dal corpo di leone e dalla testa d’uomo
Con gli occhi vuoti e impietosi come il sole avanza
Con le sue lente cosce, mentre attorno
Ruotano l’ombre degli sdegnati uccelli del deserto.
Nuovamente la tenebra cade; ma ora so
Che venti secoli di un sonno di pietra
Furono trasformati in incubo da una culla che dondola.
E quale rozza bestia, finalmente giunto al suo tempo avanza
Verso Betlemme per esservi incarnata? 

No Second Troy

 

Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great.
Had they but courage equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done, being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?

- William Butler Yeats -

Non una seconda Troia

 

Perché avrei dovuto rimproverarla

per aver riempito i miei giorni di tristezza

o perché avrebbe voluto ultimamente

insegnare ad uomini ignoranti maniere più violente,

o avventare strade secondarie su quelle maestre,

se soltanto avessero avuto un coraggio pari al desiderio?

Che cosa avrebbe potuto riempirla di pace,

lei con un animo che la nobiltà

ha reso semplice come il fuoco,

con una bellezza simile ad un arco teso,

di un tipo che non è naturale in un'età come questa,

essendo alta e solitaria e molto austera?

Perché, cosa avrebbe potuto fare essendo quella che è?

C'era forse per lei un'altra Troia da bruciare?

 

When You Are Old

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim Soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

- William Butler Yeats -

Quando tu sarai vecchia e grigia,
col capo tentennante
ed accanto al fuoco starai assonnata,
prenderai questo libro.
E lentamente lo leggerai, ricorderai sognando
dello sguardo che i tuoi occhi ebbero allora,
delle loro profonde ombre.
Di quanti amarono la grazia felice
di quei tuoi momenti
e, d'amore falso o a volte sincero,
amarono la tua bellezza.
Ma uno solo di te amò l'anima irrequieta,
uno solo allora amò le pene del volto tuo che muta.
E tu, chinandoti verso le braci, sarai un poco triste,
in un mormorio d'amore dirai,
di come se ne volò via...
passò volando oltre il confine di questi alti monti
e per sempre poi il suo volto nascose
in una folla di stelle.