Miguel Hernandez

“We, who have been born poets among all men, have been made poets beside all men by life. We come gushing the fountain of the guitars sheltered by the people: and each poet who dies leaves in another's hands, like a heritage, an instrument that comes wandering from the eternity of Nothingness to our scattered heart. Before the shadow of two poets two more of us rise, and before our shadow two others will rise tomorrow. Our source will always be the same: the earth. Our destiny is to wind up in the hands of the people. ... We poets are the wind of the people: we are born to pass blown across their pores, to lead their eyes and hearts to the most beautiful peaks ...”

Winds of the People

Winds of the people carry me,
winds of the people drag me,
spread my heart
and open my throat.
The oxen bow their heads
helplessly tame
before men with whips;
lions lift their heads
and punish in return
with their clamorous paw.
I am not of a people of oxen,
but of a people who harness
layers of lions,
gorges of eagles,
and mountains of bulls
with pride in their horns.
The oxen never thrived
on the bleak plains of Spain!
Who talks of putting a yoke
on the shoulders of this race?
Who has put shackles
or yokes on the hurricane,
and who kept the lightning
jailed in a cage?
Asturianos of courage,
Valencians of joy
and Castillans of soul,
plowed like the earth
and graceful as wings;
Andalucians of lightning,
born among guitars
and forged on torrential
anvils of tears;
Murcians of dynamite
fruitfully planted;
Leonians, Navarrans,
masters of hunger,
of sweat and the hatchet,
kings of the mines,
lords of the plowland,
men among races
like graceful roots
who go from life to death,
from nothing to nothing;
men from thin grasslands;
they would fix you with yokes,
yokes you must leave
broken on their backs.

The twilight of oxen
begins the dawn.
The oxen die dressed
in meekness and stable-stink;
but bulls, lions and eagles
die dressed in pride,
and behind them the sky
does not darken or fail.
The dying of oxen
makes a tiny show;
a proud animal's death
makes creation enlarge.
If I die let me die
with my head held high:
I'd be twenty times dead
with my mouth in the grass.
Let my teeth be clenched
and my beard stand firm.
I wait for death singing,
for nightingales sing
above the rifles
in the midst of the battle!

The Train of the Wounded

Silence that founders on the silence
of mouths closed for the night.
It does not heave to, nor stop hushing.
It speaks the smothered language of the dead.

Silence

Open roads of profound cotton,
muffle the wheels of the watches,
stop the voice of the sea, the dove,
trouble the night of their dreams.

Silence

The train rainy with loose blood,
the fragile train of those who bleed,
the silent the sorrowful the pallid
the hushed train of sufferers.

Silence

Train of the mortal paleness that rises:
the paleness covers their heads
their ai! their voice the heart the earth
the heart of the badly wounded.

Silence

They go spilling legs arms eyes,
go spilling fragments from the train.
They pass leaving trails of bitterness,
another Milky Way of stellar members.

Silence

Hoarse train dismayed, reddened:
the coal dies, the smoke sighs,
the machine sighs maternally,
advances like a long discouragement.

Silence

The long mother would like to stop
under a tunnel, stretch out, weep.
There are no stations to stop at:
only the hospital, only the breast.

To live, a fragment suffices:
a man fits in a corner of flesh.
A single finger, a single piece of wing
takes flight with the whole body.

Silence

Halt this dying train
that never finishes crossing the night:
and even the horse takes off his shoes
and sands smooth his hooves and breath.

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