Translation:Towards a Radiant Sunset

by Antonio Machado

 

   The summer sun was traveling
towards a radiant sunset,
and it was, amidst clouds of fire, a giant trumpet
behind the green poplars at the river’s edge.
   From an elm rang the eternal cutting
of the singing cicada, the joyful monorhythm,
between metal and wood,
of the summer song.
   In a dark garden
the buckets of the sleepy waterwheel were turning.
The sound of water could be heard under the dark branches.
It was a July evening, luminous and dusty.
   I went on my way,
absorbed in the solitary country twilight.
   And I was thinking: “Beautiful evening, note of an immense lyre
entirely scornful and harmonious;
beautiful evening, you cure the poor melancholy
of this vain corner, this dark corner that thinks!”
   The wavy water passed beneath the bridge’s eyes.
Far off, the city slept,
as if covered by a magic beacon of transparent gold.
The water flowed on beneath the arches of stone.
   The last red clouds crowned the hills
stained with gray olive trees and blackened oaks.
I walked wearily,
feeling that old anguish of a heavy heart.
   The water in the shade passed so melancholically,
beneath the arches of the bridge,
as if its passage were saying:
   “Oh, traveler,
barely having cast off from the tree by the river
does the poor little boat sing: we are nothing.
Where the poor river ends the immense sea awaits us.
   Beneath the eyes of the bridge the dark water flowed.
(I was thinking: Oh, soul of mine!)
   And I stopped a moment,
in that evening, to ponder...
   What is this droplet in the wind
singing to the sea, I am the sea?
   The air vibrated, deafened
by the singing insect wings filling the field with sound,
as if it had been sown
by little golden bells.
   In the blue a glittering
star glowed.
A warm wind blew
stirring up the path.
   I, in the dusty evening,
was returning to the city.
The buckets of the sleepy waterwheel rang out.
Beneath the dark branches you could hear the water falling.