851. Easter of Resurrection, by Antonio Machado

Look: the arc of life traces
a rainbow on the greening fields.
Seek your loves, young maidens,
where the spring emerges from rock.
Where water laughs and dreams and flows,
that's where love's ballad is sung.
Eyes born closed to light,
held in your arms will gaze one day,
astonished, at spring sun,
eyes that will grow blind as they depart from life.
Won't there drink, one day, at your breast
those who will work the earth tomorrow?
Oh, celebrate this bright Sunday
young mothers in flower, new life within you!
Bask in the smile from your earthly mother.
The storks are already settled in their beautiful nests
and they scribble on the towers in their white scrawl.
Mosses on the peaks gleam like emeralds.
Between the oaks, black bulls
graze on sparse grass,
and the shepherd tending his sheep
leaves his brown cape on the mountainside.

(trans Mary G. Berg & Dennis Maloney)

Source: The Landscape of Castile

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