The Road (1921)
Federico Garcia Lorca



Your lance
will never wound
the horizon. The mountain
is a shield
that guards it.

Do not dream
of the blood of the moon,
just rest. But, oh road, let
the soles of my feet
be caressed by the dew.

Enormous palmist!
Perhaps you read souls
in the faint tattoos
they leave forgotten on your back?
If you are a Flammarion
of footprints,
how you must love
the passing donkeys
who, with humble tenderness,
caress your riven flesh !
They alone consider
the aim of your enormous lance.
Buddhas among fauna,
they alone when old and wounded
spell out
your wordless book.

How melancholy you are
among the village houses!
How bright your virtue!
You patiently support
four sleeping wagons, two acacias,
and an antient well
that has no water.

In all your travels
around the world,
you find no shelter,
no cemetery, no shroud,
nor will the air of love
renew your being.

But come out of the fields
and if, in the black distance
of the eternal, you carve
the shadow with your
white file, oh road!
You will go over the bridge
of Santa Clara

(Translated by Catherine Brown )