I
Hymn to the Volunteers of the Republic
(For Spanish translation click here)

Volunteer for Spain, militant hero,

your reliable bones, when your heart marches to die,

when it marches to kill with its global agony,

I truly don’t know

what to do, where to stand; I make room, write, applaud,

cry, scrutinize, shatter, extinguish things, I say

to my heart that it’s over, to the good that comes,

and I try to disgrace myself;

uncover my impersonal forehead till I touch

this vessel of blood, restrain myself,

my size obstructed by the famous architect’s decline,

through which the animal honoring me, honors itself;

my instincts flow back to their ropes,

joy smokes before my tomb,

and again, without knowing what to do, without anything, leave me,

from my white stone, leave me

alone,

a hunched-over human, closer, much further off,

unable to hold in my hands your ecstasy,

with your cutting-edge swiftness, I offer my humble self

costumed in greatness against your double-edged speed!

One intent, clear and fertile day

Oh biennale, you of the lugubrious and supplicant half-years,

through which gunpowder went biting its elbows!

Oh bitter pain, and splintered rock more bitter still!

Oh bits clenched in the people’s teeth!

Oh day in their captive match, prayed in fury

and sovereignty, fulfilled and circular,

their birthright shut with the hands of choice;

the despots who drag their padlocks,

and in the padlocks, their dead bacterias . . .

Battles? No! Passions! And passions preceded

by sorrows with grids of hopes,

by sorrows common with the hopes of men!

death and passion for peace, the populace!

death and passion at war among the olive groves, let’s understand
each other!

As in your breath the winds change their atmospheric needle,

and in your breast, tombs exchanging keys,

your frontal bone rising itself to the first kingdom of martyrdom.

The world exclaims: “These are Spanish matters!” And it’s true.
Consider,

during a balance, point-blank,

Calderon, asleep on the tail of a dead amphibian,

or Cervantes, saying: “My kingdom is of this world, but

also of the next”: the sword’s point and edge on two bits of paper!

Contemplate Goya kneeling in prayer before a mirror,

Coll, the paladin in whose Cartesian assault

one could see his easy step had the sweat of the clouds walking slowly,

or Quevedo, that instantaneous grandfather of the dynamitens,

or Cajal, devoured by his infinite smallness, or still

Teresa, woman, dying because she doesn’t die,

or Lina Odena, conflicted on more than one point with Teresa . . .

(Every act or cheerful voice comes from the people,

and goes back toward them,

directly or conveyed

by incessant fragments, by the pink smoke

of bitter passwords which failed.)

So your child, civilian fighter, your bloodless child,

stirred by a motionless stone,

sacrifices itself, vanishes,

falls away upward and through its incombustible flame rises,

climbs to the weak,

giving Spains to the bulls,

bulls to the doves . . .

The universal dying of the proletarian in what frenetic harmony

will be ended your greatness, your misery, your propelling whirlwind,

your methodical violence, your practical and theoretical chaos,

your Dantesque and very Spanish desire of loving your enemy, even so betraying him!

Liberator girded with shackles,

without whose effort the unholdable extensions would continue till this very day,

nails would wander headless,

ancient, slow, flushed, the day

our beloved helmets unburied!

farmer falling with your green leafage for the man,

with the social inflection of your little finger,

with your ox standing with his heels dug in,

also with your word lashed to a pole,

and your rented sky

and with the day driven into your fatigue

and caught under your nails marching!

Builders,

farmers, civilians, and soldiers

of active teeming eternity; it was written

that you would make light, shielding

your eyes with the death;

that, in the cruel fall of your mouths,

abundance would come on seven platters, everything

in the world would be suddenly turned into gold,

and the gold,

fabulous beggars of your own secretion of blood,

so the gold would at that time be of gold!

All men will love each other

and will eat together from the corners of your sad handkerchief

and will drink together in the name

of your accursed throats!

They will take a rest from this run walking to the foot,

they will weep thinking of your orbits, they will be fortunate

in and to the sound

of your atrocious return, blooming, innate,

they will settle up their affairs of the day, their dreamed

and sung figures!

The same shoes will fit the man who ascends

without roads to his body

and to that man who climbs down to the form of his soul!

Embracing, the dumb will speak, the cripple will walk!

Returning, the blind will see,

and the deaf palpitating will hear!

The ignorant will be wise and the wise will be ignorant!

Kisses that could not be given are given!

Only death will die! The ant

will bring crumbs of bread to the elephant shackled

to his brutal delicacy;

the aborted children will be born again perfect, spatial,

and all men will toil,

all men will bear fruit,

all men will embrace once again!

Workman, savior, our redeemer,

brother, forgive us our trespasses!

As the drum rolls in its adagios;

“So that your back never be so ephemeral!

That ever so changing, your profile!”

Italian volunteer, among whose animals of battle

the Abyssinian lion is limping!

Soviet volunteer, marching at the head of your universal chest!

Volunteers from the south, from the north, from the east,

and you, western man, closing the funereal song of the dawn!

Known soldier, whose name marches in the sound of an embrace!

Warrior raised by the earth, arming yourself

with dust,

shod with positive magnets,

your personal beliefs in force,

your character different, your intimate ferule,

complexion immediate,

your language put on your shoulders,

and your soul crowned with pebbles!

Volunteer swathed in your cold,

temperate, or torrid zone,

heroes all around,

victim in a column of conquerors;

in Spain, in Madrid, you are called

to kill. Volunteers in the service of life!

Because they kill in Spain, others kill

the boy, and his toy, which comes to a stop,

the resplendent mother Rosenda,

the old Adam who talked aloud to his horse,

and to the dog that used to sleep on the stairs.

They kill the book, fire on its auxiliary verbs,

at its defenseless first page!

They kill the exact case of the statue,

the wise man, his stick, his colleague,

the barber next door—all right he might have possibly cut me,

but he was a good man, and, soon, an unfortunate one,

the beggar who yesterday was singing opposite,

the nurse who today passed crying,

the priest staggering under the stubborn height of his knees . . .

Volunteers,

for life, for the good ones, kill

death, kill the evil ones.

Do it for the freedom of all,

for the exploited and the exploiter,

for painless peace—I sense it

when I sleep at the foot of my forehead

and more when I run shouting—

and I do it, I keep saying to you,

for the illiterate to whom I write,

for the barefoot genius with his flocks,

for the fallen comrades,

their ashes embracing the corpse on the road!

That you

volunteers for Spain and for the world, should come,

I dreamed that I was good, and that I should see

your blood, volunteers!

It’s a long heart’s time since many griefs and

camels of an age came to pray.

Today the good, burning, marches on your side,

and the reptiles of immanent eyelids follow you with love

and two steps behind, one step away,

the direction of water rushing to see its limit before burning away.