Dreams in Dialogue

I

Your form appears to me as in the high
country!…My words evoke
green fields, plateaus bare and dry,
flowering briars, ashen rock.
And, obeying memory, dark oaks
bud on the hill, poplars by the riverside:
the shepherd toils up the slope,
a balcony in town is glowing: mine,
Ours. Do you see? Towards Aragon, far off
the peaks of Moncayo, white and red…
Look at the fires of that crimson cloud,
and a star in the blue, beloved.
Santana Hill, beyond the Duero,
Turning dark in evening silence.

II

You ask why my heart forsakes this place
For the sake of the high plateaus,
and among farming, and sea-going folk,
I sigh for Castilian wastes?
No one elects his love. My fate
led me one day to the grey barrens,
where cold snows in falling veil
the long-dead oak tree shadows.
From a slice of Spain, high and rocky,
A ragged branch of rosemary, I
bring flowery Guadalquiver, to you.
My heart’s where it was born, not to life
I mean, but to love, beside the Duero…
…The pointed cypress, the wall all white!

III

Lady, the embers of the evening
part the dark clouds of the storm
paint on the ashen stony form
of some far hill, the glow of morning.
Dawn congealing on cold stone,
in the traveller’s heart striking fear,
more than, at midday, a mountain lion,
or in some deep gorge, a giant bear.
Caught, with the flame of one passion,
in a clouded dream of hope and fear
I go to the sea, towards oblivion
–and not like night-bound masses here
rocks darkened by the earth’s rotation –.
Don’t call to me: I shan’t reappear.

IV

Oh solitude, my sole companion,
muse of marvels, that gave my voice
the word unasked for, answer my question!
Who is this now with whom I talk?
Away from the noisy masquerade
My friendless sadness turns, lady,
with you, you of the veiled face,
always veiled to speak with me.
And I think: that I am who I am, to me
that’s no great puzzle, to be the shape
created in the inner mirror, it’s the mystery
rather of your loving voice: show your face,
so that your eyes of diamond I might see,
your diamond eyes fixed on me in space.