Miguel Hernandez, "First Song"

[the-grynne.livejournal.com]

FIRST SONG

The field has drawn back
when it saw man, muscles
tightened, rush into it.

What an abyss appears
between the olive tree and man!

The animal who sings:
the animal who is able
to weep and to sink roots,
remembered his claws.

Claws that he adorned
with silkiness and flowers
but at last allows to be bare
in all their cruelty.

My claws are snapping on my hands.
Keep away from them, my son.
I am liable to plunge them,
I am liable to thrust them
into your fragile body.

I have turned back into the tiger.
Keep away, or I will destroy you.

Today love is death,
and man is a hunter of man.


MIGUEL HERNANDEZ

Translated from the Spanish by James Wright

Comments

just found another of his I adore:

[iatrogenicmyth.livejournal.com]

[Everything is full of you]

Everything is full of you
and I am full of everything:
the cities are full,
and the cemeteries are full,

you, with all the houses,
me, with all the bodies.

Down the streets, I will leave
something that I will retake:
pieces of my life
come from far away.

I go, feathered by agony
against my will, to see myself
in the threshold, in the bottom
hidden since birth.

Everything is full of me:
of something that is yours and memory
lost, but found
once more, some day.

Days that linger behind
decidedly black,
indelibly red,
golden upon your body.

Cast from your hair,
everything is full of you:
of something that I haven't found
and look for among your bones.