Antonio Machado – Is My Soul Asleep?

Antonio Machado

The great Spanish poet Antonio Machado, who moved and traveled regularly throughout his life –indeed ending his days hounded from his native land by a despicable war– here describes the internal landscape of the poet. A rootless elopement of the mind and senses, his poems return to the timid and preoccupied as dispatches from the frontiers of experience.

¿Mi corazón se hay dormido?
Colmenares de mis sueños,
¿ya no labráis? ¿Está seca
la noria del pensamiento,
los cangilones vacíos,
girando, de sombra llenos?

No, mi corazón no duerme.
Está despierto, despierto.
Ni duerme ni sueña, mira,
los claros ojos abiertos,
señas lejanas y escucha
a orillas del gran silencio.

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Is my soul asleep?
Have those beehives that labor
at night stopped? And the water-
wheel of thought,
is it dry, the cups empty,
wheeling, carrying only shadows?

No, my soul is not asleep,
It is awake, wide awake.
It neither sleeps nor dreams, but watches,
its clear eyes open,
far-off things, and listens
at the shores of the great silence.

-Antonio Machado (1875-1939)