Poems of Antonio Machado

What's so special about Antonio Machado? What's to like about his poetry? For me it's its simplicity, its brevity, its being full of love. For God, for a woman. Though painful to read. I don't mind. Below are some prime examples of his style of verse. First, a couple of pithy love notes from his collection of poems called Nuevas canciones (New songs) combining both intense natural and figurative imagery that give you the idea, for example, that in the touch of spring one feels his longing for love to be reawakened.

CLIX CANCIONES III La primavera ha venido. Nadie sabe cómo ha sido. VIII La fuente y las cuatro acacias en flor de la plazoleta. Ya no quema el sol. ¡Tardecita alegre! Canta, ruiseñor. Es la misma hora de mi corazón. XI A las palabras de amor les sienta bien su poquito de exageración.	CLIX SONGS III Spring is here again. No one knows how it came. VIII The fountains and the four acacias in flower in the little plaza. The sun no longer burns. Pleasant late afternoon! Sing, you nightingale. It’s the same hour in my heart. XI Words of love sound better for a little excess.
	Translation from A. S. Kline's Poetry Archive

As death, besides love, is a recurring theme in the works of Antonio Machado, many scholars have studied his understanding of it thoroughly. Armando López Castro, Literature Professor of the University of León, says (see the references) that according to the poet's comprehension the death is a pit that opens to the possibility of a creation, which explains why he lived dying, in the permanent state of metamorphosis, accepting the death without fear and waiting for it just for being born. López Castro insists that Antonio Machado understood the death as it is and gave way to it big time, letting himself be driven along. To illustrate this I give the following examples from the collection of poems called Galerías.

LXXVIII ¿Y ha de morir contigo el mundo mago donde guarda el recuerdo los hálitos más puros de la vida, la blanca sombra del amor primero, la voz que fue a tu corazón, la mano que tú querías retener en sueños, y todos los amores que llegaron al alma, al hondo cielo? ¿Y ha de morir contigo el mundo tuyo, la vieja vida en orden tuyo y nuevo? ¿Los yunques y crisoles de tu alma trabajan para el polvo y para el viento?

LXXVIII And is that magical world to die with you, where memory goes guarding life’s purest breaths first love’s white shadow, the voice that entered your heart, the hand that you had wished to hold in dream, and all things loved that touched the soul, the depths of sky? And is that world of yours to die with you, the old life you renewed and set in order? Have the anvils and crucibles of your spirit laboured here only for dust and wind?

Translation from A. S. Kline's Poetry Archive

One can't help but think that his death portrayals are a flashback. He seems to have been more like someone risen from the dead than someone born. Oddly, he made no bones about the death for not dying. That was the trick, his survival strategy. Anyway, take a look at another one.

Llamó a mi corazón, un claro día, con perfume de jazmín el viento. - A cambio de este aroma, todo el aroma de tus rosas quiero. - No tengo rosas; flores en mi jardín no hay ya; todas han muerto. Me llevare los llantos de las fuentes, las hojas amarillas y los mustios petalos. Y el viento huyó... Mi corazón sangraba... Alma, ¿qué has hecho de tu pobre huerto?.

The wind, one brilliant day, called to my soul with an aroma of jasmine. “In return for this jasmine odor, I'd like all the odor of your roses.” “I have no roses; I have no flowers left now in my garden... All are dead.” “Then I'll take the waters of the fountains, and the yellow leaves and the dried-up petals.” The wind left. I wept. I said to my soul, “What have you done with the garden entrusted to you?”

Translated by Robert Bly (see the references)

From his first poems on, he never lost his hope to make it there, to the Great Beyond (al Más Allá), on his way from the shadows to the light. Thinking of the death as of the fundamentals of life and accepting the latter, he refused to consider the death to be an end. A thought that serves a beautiful final chord to the post.

Antonio and Leonor, his short-term wife and permanent muse