Antonio Machado Listens to the

Shadows of the Sunset in Long

Island 
Launch Audio in a New Window
BY  FER NAN DO V ALVE RD E
TRANSLATED BY  C AR OLYN FO RC HÉ

They call you the New World

but I close my eyes and the cold is a cloud
that envelopes history.

Sorrow is ancient.

It’s raining.
It rains on every word
and on the verses that I write.

These blue days and this childhood sun are the rain
soaking a house in ruins.

The ocean is the homeland of pain.

I can hear the drums of victory

that silence the night of those in exile.

I can hear the clouds floating past,

the ocean currents
and the footsteps of the young clambering over the weeping
piers.

This is the future,

to contemplate how the armies advance,
how fire devours lips and clouds
in a twilight of pulpits and the blood of innocents,
clean and clear blood
that once was love and lightning.

I can listen, but it’s no use,

my voice does not join with the children’s singing nor the dawn
surrounding the foreign country of happiness.

This is the future,

an afternoon of rain spilled into the sea,
a shadow that stalks the names and songs,
the face of my mother under the barren land.
Translated from the Spanish

Source: poetryfoundation.org