Introduction
A poem by Antonio Machado reflecting his vision of the rural lands and society of Spain.
Content
The man of these fields who burns down the pine groves
and awaits their remains like spoils of war,
once scraped away the dark holm-oak woods,
and felled the sturdy oak forests of the mountain range.
Today he sees his poor children fleeing their homes;
the storm carrying away the topsoil of the earth
down sacred rivers toward the wide seas;
and in cursed step-lands he works, suffers, and wanders.
He is the son of a lineage of rugged travelers,
shepherds who lead their herds of merinos
to fertile Extremadura, transhumant flocks
stained by dust and gilded by the sun of the roads.
Short, agile, long-suffering, with eyes of a crafty man,
sunken, distrustful, restless; and drawn
like a crossbow arch, on the lean face
with prominent cheekbones, his bushy eyebrows.
Abundant is the wicked man of the field and the village,
capable of insane vices and bestial crimes,
who beneath his brown smock hides an ugly soul,
slave to the seven deadly sins.
His eyes ever clouded with envy or sadness,
he guards his prey and mourns what his neighbor achieves;
neither moved by his misfortune nor enjoying his wealth;
both good fortune and ill luck wound and distress him.
The spirit of these fields is bloodthirsty and fierce:
as evening wanes, over the remote hill,
you will see the silhouette of an archer loom large,
the form of an immense archer centaur.
You will see warlike plains and ascetic barrens;
was not the biblical garden once across these fields?:
these are lands for the eagle, a slice of a planet
across which wanders the shadow of Cain.