Residence on Earth (New Directions Paperbook) (25 page)

the wood is shattered

until it reaches mourning: there are no roots

for man: all scarcely rests

upon a tremor of rain.

See how the guitar

has rotted in the mouth of the fragrant bride:

see how the words that built so much

now are extermination: upon the lime and among the shattered

marble, look

at the trace—now moss-covered—of the sob.

But, like earth’s memory, like the stony

splendor of metal and silence,

is your victory, people, fatherland, and grain.

Your riddled banner advances

like your breast above the scars

of time and earth.

Where are the miners, where are

the rope makers, the leather

curers, those who cast the nets?

Where are they?

Where are those who used to sing at the top

of the building, spitting and swearing

upon the lofty cement?

Where are the railroadmen

dedicated and nocturnal?

Where is the supplier’s union?

With a rifle, with a rifle. Among the

dark throbbing of the plainland,

looking out over the debris.

Aiming the bullet at the harsh

enemy as at the thorns,

as at the vipers, that’s it.

By day and by night, in the sad

ash of dawn, in the virtue

of the scorched noon.

Solemn is the triumph of the people.

At its great victorious passage

the eyeless potato and the heavenly

grape glitter in the earth.

Bitten space, troop crushed

against the grain, broken

horseshoes, frozen between frost and stones,

harsh moon.

Moon of a wounded mare, charred,

wrapped in exhausted thorns, menacing, sunken

metal or bone, absence, bitter cloth,

smoke of gravediggers.

Behind the acrid halo of saltpeter,

from substance to substance, from water to water,

swift as threshed wheat,

burned and eaten.

Accidental crust softly soft,

black ash absent and scattered,

now only echoing cold, abominable

materials of rain.

May my knees keep it hidden

more than this fugitive territory,

may my eyelids grasp it until they can name and wound,

may my blood keep this taste of shadow

so that there will be no forgetting.

Branches all of classic mother-of-pearl, halos

of sea and sky, wind of laurels

for you, oaken heroes,

antitankers.

You have been in the night mouth

of war

the angels of fire, the fearsome ones,

the pure sons of the earth.

That’s how you were, planted

in the fields, dark, like seeds, lying

waiting. And before the hurricaned iron, at the chest

of the monster,

you launched not just a pale bit of explosive

but your deep steaming heart,

a lash as destructive and blue as gunpowder.

You rose up,

noble, heavenly against the mountains

of cruelty, naked sons

of earth and glory.

Once you saw

only the olive branch, only the nets

filled with scales and silver: you gathered

the instruments, the wood, the iron

of the harvests and the building:

in your hands flourished the beautiful

forest pomegranate or the morning

onion, and suddenly

you are here laden with lightning,

clutching glory, bursting

with furious powers,

alone and harsh facing the darkness.

Liberty sought you out in the mines,

and begged for peace for your ploughs:

Liberty rose weeping

along the roads, shouted in the corridors

of the houses: in the countryside

her voice passed between orange and wind

calling for ripe-hearted men, and you came,

and here you are, the chosen

sons of victory, many times fallen, your hands

many times blotted out, broken the most hidden bones,

your mouths

stilled, pounded

to destruction your silence:

but you surged up suddenly, in the midst

of the whirlwind, again, others, all

your unfathomable, your burning

race of hearts and roots.

At this hour I remember everything and everyone,

vigorously, sunkenly in

the regions that—sound and feather—

striking a little, exist

beyond the earth, but on the earth. Today a new winter begins.

There is in that city,

where lies what I love,

there is no bread, no light: a cold windowpane falls

upon dry geraniums. By night black dreams

opened by howitzers, like bloody oxen:

no one in the dawn of the ramparts

but a broken cart: now moss, now silence of ages,

instead of swallows, on the burned houses,

drained of blood, empty, their doors open to the sky:

now the market begins to open its poor emeralds,

and the oranges, the fish,

brought each day across the blood,

offer themselves to the hands of the sister and the widow.

City of mourning, undermined, wounded,

broken, beaten, bullet-riddled, covered

with blood and broken glass, city without night, all

night and silence and explosions and heroes,

now a new winter more naked and more alone,

now without flour, without steps, with your moon

of soldiers.

Everything, everyone.

Poor sun, our lost

blood, terrible heart

shaken and mourned. Tears like heavy bullets

have fallen on your dark earth sounding

like falling doves, a hand that death

closes forever, blood of each day

and each night and each week and each

month. Without speaking of you, heroes asleep

and awake, without speaking of you who make the water

and the earth

tremble with your glorious purpose,

at this hour I listen to the weather on a street,

someone speaks to me, winter

comes again to the hotels

where I have lived,

everything is city that I listen to and distance

surrounded by fire as if by a spume

of vipers assaulted by a

water of hell.

For more than a year now

the masked ones have been touching your human shore

and dying at the contact of your electric blood:

sacks of Moors, sacks of traitors

have rolled at your feet of stone: neither smoke nor death

have conquered your burning walls.

Then,

what’s happening, then? Yes, they are the exterminators,

they are the devourers: they spy on you, white city,

the bishop of turbid scruff, the fecal and feudal

young masters, the general in whose hand

jingle thirty coins: against your walls are

a circle of women, dripping and devout,

a squadron of putrid ambassadors,

and a sad vomit of military dogs.

Praise to you, praise in cloud, in sunray,

in health, in swords,

bleeding front whose thread of blood

echoes on the deeply wounded stones,

a slipping away of harsh sweetness,

bright cradle armed with lightning,

fortress substance, air of blood

from which bees are born.

Today you who live, Juan,

today you who watch, Pedro, who conceive, sleep, eat:

today in the lightless night on guard without sleep

and without rest,

alone on the cement, across the gashed earth,

from the blackened wire, to the South, in the middle, all around,

without sky, without mystery,

men like a collar of cordons defend

the city surrounded by flames: Madrid hardened

by an astral blow, by the shock of fire:

earth and vigil in the deep silence

of victory: shaken

like a broken rose, surrounded

by infinite laurel.

Arms of the people! Here! The threat, the siege

are still wasting the earth, mixing it with death,

earth rough with goading!

Your health,

your health say the mothers of the world,

the schools say your health, the old carpenters,

Army of the People, they say health to you with blossoms,

milk, potatoes, lemon, laurel,

everything that belongs to the earth and to the mouth

of man.

Everything, like a necklace

of hands, like a

throbbing waist, like a persistence of thunderbolts,

everything prepares itself for you, converges on you!

Day of iron.

Fortified blue!

Brothers, onward,

onward through the ploughed lands,

onward in the dry and sleepless night, delirious and threadbare,

onward among the vines, treading the cold color of the rocks,

good health to you, go on. More cutting than winter’s voice,

more sensitive than the eyelid, more unfailing than the tip

of the thunderbolt,

exact as the swift diamond, warlike anew,

warriors according to the biting waters of the central lands,

according to the flower and the wine, according to the spiral

heart of the earth,

according to the roots of all the leaves, of all the fragrant

produce of the earth.

Your health, soldiers, your health, red fallow lands,

health, hard clovers, health, towns stopped

in the light of the lightning, your good health,

onward, onward, onward, onward,

over the mines, over the cemeteries, facing the abominable

appetite of death, facing the bristling

terror of the traitors,

people, effective people, hearts and guns,

hearts and guns, onward.

Photographers, miners, railroadmen, brothers

of coal and stone, relatives of the hammer,

woods, festival of gay nonsense, onward,

guerrilla fighters, chiefs, sergeants, political commissars,

people’s aviators, night fighters,

sea fighters, onward:

facing you

there is only a mortal chain, a hole

of rotten fish: onward!

there are only dying dead there,

swamps of terrible bloody pus,

there are no enemies; onward, Spain,

onward, people’s bells,

onward, apple orchards,

onward, banners of the grain,

onward, giants of the fire,

because in the struggle, in the wave, in the meadow,

in the mountain, in the twilight laden with acrid smell,

you bear a lineage of permanence, a thread

of hard harshness.

Meanwhile,

root and garland rise from the silence

to await the mineral victory:

each instrument, each red wheel,

each mountain mango or plume of plough,

each product of the soil, each tremor of blood

wants to follow your steps, Army of the People:

your ordered light reaches poor forgotten

men, your sharp star

sinks its raucous rays into death

and establishes the new eyes of hope.

En la noche el labriego duerme, despierta y hunde

su mano en las tinieblas preguntando a la aurora:

alba, sol de mañana, luz del día que viene,

dime si aún las manos más puras de los hombres

defienden el Castillo del honor, dime, aurora,

si el acero en tu frente rompe su poderío,

si el hombre está en su sitio, si el trueno está en su sitio,

dime, dice el labriego, si no escucha la tierra

cómo cae la sangre de los enrojecidos

héroes, en la grandeza de la noche terrestre,

dime si sobre el árbol todavía está el cielo,

dime si aún la pólvora suena en Stalingrado.

Y el marinero en medio del mar terrible mira

buscando entre las húmedas constelaciones

una, la roja estrella de la ciudad ardiente,

y halla en su corazón esa estrella que quema,

esa estrella de orgullo quieren tocar sus manos,

esa estrella de llanto la construyen sus ojos.

Ciudad, estrella roja, dicen el mar y el hombre,

ciudad, cierra tus rayos, cierra tus puertas duras,

cierra, ciudad, tu ilustre laurel ensangrentado,

y que la noche tiemble con el brillo sombrío

de tus ojos detrás de un planeta de espadas.

Y el español recuerda Madrid y dice: hermana,

resiste, capital de la gloria, resiste:

del suelo se alza toda la sangre derramada

de España, y por España se levanta de nuevo,

y el español pregunta junto al muro

de los fusilamientos, si Stalingrado vive:

y hay en la cárcel una cadena de ojos negros

que horadan las paredes con tu nombre,

y España se sacude con tu sangre y tus muertos,

porque tú le tendiste, Stalingrado, el alma

cuando España paría héroes como los tuyos.

Ella conoce la soledad, España,

como hoy, Stalingrado, tú conoces la tuya.

España desgarró la tierra con sus uñas

cuando Paris estaba más bonita que nunca,

España desangraba su inmenso árbol de sangre

cuando Londres peinaba, como nos cuenta Pedro

Garfías, su césped y sus lagos de cisnes.

Hoy ya conoces eso, recia virgen,

hoy ya conoces, Rusia, la soledad y el frío.

Cuando miles de obuses tu corazón destrozan,

cuando los escorpiones con crimen y veneno,

Stalingrado, acuden a morder tus entrañas,

Nueva York baila, Londres medita, y yo digo “merde, ”

porque mi corazón no puede más y nuestros

corazones

no pueden más, no pueden

en un mundo que deja morir solos sus héroes.

Los dejáis solos? Ya vendrán por vosotros!

Los dejáis solos?

Queréis que la vida

huya a la tumba, y la sonrisa de los hombres

sea borrada por la letrina y el calvario?

Por qué no respondéis?

Queréis más muertos en el frente del Este

hasta que llenen totalmente el cielo vuestro?

Pero entonces no os va a quedar sino el infierno.

El mundo está cansándose de pequeñas hazañas,

de que en Madagascar los generales

maten con heroísmo cincuenta y cinco monos.

El mundo está cansado de otoñales reuniones

presididas aún por un paraguas.

Ciudad, Stalingrado, no podemos

llegar a tus murallas, estamos lejos.

Somos los mexicanos, somos los araucanos,

somos los patagones, somos los guaraníes,

somos los uruguayos, somos los chilenos,

somos millones de hombres.

Ya tenemos por suerte deudos en la familia,

pero aún no llegamos a defenderte, madre.

Ciudad, ciudad de fuego, resiste hasta que un día

lleguemos, indios náufragos, a tocar tus murallas

como un beso de hijos que esperaban llegar.

Stalingrado, aún no hay Segundo Frente,

pero no caerás aunque el hierro y el fuego

te muerdan día y noche.

Aunque mueras, no mueres!

Porque los hombres ya no tienen muerte

y tienen que seguir luchando desde el sitio en que caen

hasta que la victoria no esté sino en tus manos

aunque estén fatigadas y horadadas y muertas,

porque otras manos rojas, cuando las vuestras caigan,

sembrarán por el mundo los huesos de tus héroes

para que tu semilla llene toda la tierra.