The War of Love
by Antonio Machado

Selected and Translated from Spanish
by Gill Schwartz

Time that silvered my beard,
caved in my eyes and enlarged my forehead
continues being in all recalled to mind,
and meanwhile grows deeper, more limpid.

Infantile fear, adolescent love,
how you are beautified by this autumn light!
Darkest ways of ugly life,
even you in this westward sun are luminous!

How, in the fountain where the water dwells,
a jutting stone has inscribed:
The abacus of time lacks but one hour.
And how our tryst turned to absence
beneath a November gilded elm,
at the depth of my tale revives.

 

 

Copyright Nathaniel Schwartz 2003   www.WisdomVisions.com