always fugitive, always near
always concealed, always disdainful
always leaving, always untouched
always in black, always dreaming
always the bitter flower
always the night, always concealed
always fugitive, always caged
always your face
always the bitter flower
of your lips, always your bed
always near, always fleeing
always waiting, always waiting
always calling to you
always the night deepens
always the night
always fugitive, always near”
Antonio Machado
Sorrow, it is not true that I know you;
you are the nostalgia for a good life,
and the aloneness of the soul in shadow,
the sailing ship without wreck and without guide.
Like an abandoned dog who cannot find
a smell or a track and roams
along the roads, with no road, like
the child who in a night of the fair
gets lost among the crowd,
and the air is dusty, and the candles
fluttering,--astounded, his heart
weighed down by music and by pain:
that's how I am, drunk. sad by nature,
a mad and lunar guitarist, a poet,
and an ordinary man lost in dreams,
searching constantly for God among the mists.
Commentary
Antonio Machado