Caminante

I saw on Facebook that some folks were asking for a favorite English version of this famous poem by Antonio Machado:


Caminante no hay camino


Caminante, son tus huellas

el camino y nada más;

Caminante, no hay camino,

se hace camino al andar.

Al andar se hace el camino,

y al volver la vista atrás

se ve la senda que nunca

se ha de volver a pisar.

Caminante no hay camino

sino estelas en la mar.


---
Here's my crack at it:


There is no trail

Traces of our walking feet.

The trail is this and nothing more.

There is no trail.

There are only our steps.

Our steps become a path;

looking back

we see only steps

we shall never take again.

There is no trail.

Only our wake upon the sea.

O FRÍO by María do Cebreiro

A translation of María do Cebreiro's "O frío", from her book O deserto, published in 2015 by Apiario.

The Cold

Wind crosses into the wounded body

in such a subtle way that it is neither

an invasion nor a sign

of belonging. It is as if the inside

entered the outside. They told her

that the wound would heal, yet no one

tells her how much she will miss

the wound when it closes. The wind

and the cold entering the body, making her

tremble, this is a thing difficult

to compare to anything else.

It is a thing capable of erasing

the border between love and that which is loved,

the dividing line between creating and creatura,

the distance between being born

and ourselves, newborn before

the extraordinary occurrence

of the wind entering us

through a small cold-wrought wound.