Rain

January 1919

(Granada)

The rain has a vague secret of tenderness,
something resignedly and amiably somnolent.
With it there awakes a humble music
that makes the sleeping soul of the landscape vibrate.

 

It is a blue kiss that the Earth receives,
the primal myth that once again comes true.
The already cold contact of the old sky and earth
with a gentleness like that of a perpetual coming of evening.

 

It is the dawn of the fruit. The dawn brought to us by the flowers,
anointing us with the holy spirit of the seas.
The dawn that sheds life upon the sown fields
and, in our soul, the sadness of the unknown.

 

The dreadful nostalgia for a wasted life,
the fatal feeling that you were born too late,
or the restless hope for an impossible morning
with the nearby restlessness of the flesh’s ache.

 

Love awakens in the gray of its rhythm,
our inner sky enjoys a triumph of blood,
but our optimism is changed to sadness
when we observe the dead drops on the panes.

 

And the drops are eyes of infinity which gaze
at the white infinity which served them as mother.

 

Each raindrop trembles on the clouded glass,
leaving behind on it divine diamond-scratches.
They are watery poets who have seen, and meditate on,
that which the multitude of rivers doesn’t know.

 

O silent rain without tempests or winds,
gentle, calm rain, like sheep bells and soft light,
good, peaceful rain—the real kind—
which falls on every object lovingly and sadly!

 

O Franciscan rain, carrying in your drops
the souls of bright fountains and humble springs!
Cuando sobre los campos desciendes lentamente
las rosas de mi pecho con tus sonidos abres.

 

El canto primitivo que dices al silencio
y la historia sonora que cuentas al ramaje
los comenta llorando mi corazón desierto
en un negro y profundo pentágrama sin clave.

 

Mi alma tiene tristeza de la lluvia serena,
tristeza resignada de cosa irrealizable,
tengo en el horizonte un lucero encendido
y el corazón me impide que corra a contemplarle.

 

¡Oh lluvia silenciosa que los árboles aman
y eres sobre el piano dulzura emocionante,
das al alma las mismas nieblas y resonancias
que pones en el alma dormida del paisaje!