Miguel Hernandez, 'The Soldier and the Snow'

[duathir.livejournal.com]

Cross-post from war_poetry:

The Soldier and the Snow

December has frozen its double-edged breath
and blows it down from the icy heavens,
like a dry fire coming apart in threads,
like a huge ruin that topples on soldiers.

Snow where horses have left their hoof-marks
is a solitude of grief that gallops on.
Snow like split fingernails, or claws badly worn,
like a malice out of heaven or a final contempt.

It bites, prunes, cuts through with the heavy
slash of a bloodshot and pale marble ax.
It comes down, it falls everywhere like some ruined embrace
of canyons and wings, solitude and snow.

( This violence that splits off from the core of winter, )

by Miguel Hernandez
translated by Timothy Baland