Desnuda está la tierra,
y el alma aúlla al horizonte pálido
como loba famélica. ¿Qué buscas,
poeta, en el ocaso?
deur Antonio Machado
Naak is die aarde
en die siel skree teen die bleek horison
soos ’n honger wolfwyfie. Wat soek jy,
digter, in die sonsondergang?
Dit is bitter om te loop want die pad
weeg swaar op die hart! Die yskoue wind,
en die nag wat hier is en die bitterheid
van die afstand! … op die wit pad
word party roerlose bome swart;
in die ver berge
is daar goud en bloed … Die son is dood … Wat soek jy
digter, in die sonsondergang?
Uit Spaans vertaal deur De Waal Venter
Bron: Wikipedia
Antonio Machado, in full Antonio Cipriano José María y Francisco de Santa Ana Machado y Ruiz (26 July 1875 – 22 February 1939), was a Spanish poet and one of the leading figures of the Spanish literary movement known as the Generation of ’98.
Works
Machado’s evolution has strong links to larger European trends in the same period. He turned away from the hermetic esthetic principles of post-symbolism and cultivated the dynamic openness of social realism. Like such French æsthetes as Verlaine, Machado began with a fin de siècle contemplation of his sensory world, portraying it through memory and the impressions of his private consciousness. And like his socially-conscious colleagues of the Generation of 1898, he emerged from his solitude to contemplate Spain’s historical landscape with a sympathetic yet unindulgent eye. His poetic work begins with the publication of Soledades in 1903. In this short volume many personal links which will characterize his later work are noticeable. In Soledades, Galerías. Otros poemas, published in 1907, his voice becomes his own and influences 20th Century poets Octavio Paz, Derek Walcott, and Giannina Braschi who writes about Machado’s impact in her Spanglish classic Yo-Yo Boing!.[1] The most typical feature of his personality is the antipathetic, softly sorrowful tone that can be felt even when he describes real things or common themes of the time, for example abandoned gardens, old parks or fountains: places which he approaches via memory or dreams.
Poetry Poësie De Waal Venter 