Translation:I Listen to the Songs

I Listen to the Songs (Yo escucho los cantos) (1907)
by Antonio Machado, translated from Spanish by Wikisource
2008934I Listen to the Songs (Yo escucho los cantos)1907Antonio Machado

 

I listen to the songs
of ancient cadences,
that the children sing
when they play in unison,
and they pour out in unison,
as flow the waters
from the springs of stone:
with the monotonies
of eternal laughter
that isn’t cheerful,
with ancient tears,
that have no bitterness
and which speak of sadness,
the sadness of love
in ancient legends.
   On the children’s lips,
the songs bring
the hazily the story
and clearly the woe;
as clear as the water
brings its old wives’ tale
of ancient loves
never to be told.
   Playing, in the shade
of an old square,
the children were singing...
   The spring of stone
pours its eternal
crystal of legend.
   The children were singing
innocent songs,
of something that passes
and never arrives:
the hazy story
and the clear woe.
The serene spring
was following its song;
the story erased,
recounting its woe.

 This work is a translation and has a separate copyright status to the applicable copyright protections of the original content.

Original:

This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.


The longest-living author of this work died in 1939, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 84 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.

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Translation:

This work is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license, which allows free use, distribution, and creation of derivatives, so long as the license is unchanged and clearly noted, and the original author is attributed.

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