THE POEMS OF CAMPOS DE CASTILLA -The arrow --To a dry elm tree

THE POEMS OF CAMPOS DE CASTILLA

The arrow

Who lends me a ladder,
to climb the wood
to remove the nails
to Jesus the Nazarene?
Popular arrow

Oh the arrow, the singing
to the Christ of the gypsies,
always with blood on the hands
always to unlock!
Song of the Andalusian people
that all the springs
he's asking for stairs
to climb the cross!
Sing of my land,
that flowers
to the Jesus of agony,
and it is the faith of my elders!
Oh, you are not my singing!
I can not sing, I do not want to,
to that Jesus of the wood,
but to the one who walked in the sea!


***

To a dry elm tree

The old elm, split by lightning
and in its rotten half,
with the April rains and the May sun
some green leaves have come out.

The centennial elm on the hill
what licks the Duero! A yellowish moss
it smudges the white bark
to the rotten and dusty trunk.

It will not be, as the singing poplars
that guard the road and the riverbank,
inhabited by brown nightingales.

Army of ants in a row
it is climbing through it, and in its entrails
the spiders gray their gray fabrics.

Before you go down, elm of the Duero,
with his ax the woodcutter, and the carpenter
turn you into bell hair,
carriage spear or cart yoke;
before red at home, tomorrow,
ardas of some miserable house,
on the edge of a road;
before I unravel a whirlwind
and crush the breath of the white saws;
before the river to the sea pushes you
by valleys and ravines,
elm, I want to write in my portfolio
the grace of your green branch.
My heart waits
also, towards the light and towards life,
Another miracle of spring.


***