It was through reading Jim Harrison’s book, “A Really Big Lunch” (see blog post #19), that I decided to get more familiar with the poetry of Antonio Machado. I had read some of his poems of course, mostly in anthologies of poets writing in Spanish. But that was about the extent of it. Harrison, on the other hand was a champion of Machado’s poetry. He even spent some time on his frequent trips to Europe, trekking the route that Machado had walked when fleeing Franco’s fascist persecution of poets and artists in Spain. Legend had it that Machado had hidden a suitcase full of poetry in a cave along the route in the hopes of retrieving it after the civil war ended, That plan died when he did, in France in 1939.
Harrison maybe was looking for the poetry, and maybe just honoring a beloved poet by walking in his shoes.
Anyway, I purchased “Border of a Dream: Selected Poems of Antonio Machado” (Copper Canyon Press, 2004) translated by Willis Barnstone. I’ve been meandering through this collection, a few at a time, for the last few weeks and enjoying it. Here’s one of my favorites so far:
“I dreamt you were guiding me”
I dreamt you were guiding me
down a white footpath
in the middle of the green meadow
toward the blue of the sierras,
toward the blue hills
one serene morning.
I felt your hand in mine,
your companion hand,
your young woman’s voice in my ear
like a new bell,
like a virgin bell
of a spring daybreak.
It was your voice and hand
in dreams that seemed true.
Live, hope. Who knows
what the earth swallows!