and every twenty Springs from the beginning,
she has carried the cold seaweed
for her children’s food and the castle’s reward.
And every twenty autumns gone
she has lost the golden summer of her bloom,
and the Black Labour has ploughed the furrow
across the white smoothness of her forehead.
And thy gentle church has spoken
about the lost state of her miserable soul,
and the unremitting toil has lowered
her body to a black peace in a grave.
And her time has gone like a black sludge
seeping through the thatch of a poor dwelling:
the hard Black Labour was her inheritance;
grey is her sleep to-night.
MUJER DE LAS HIGHLANDS
¿La has visto, gran judío,
al que llaman Hijo Único de Dios?
¿Has visto en Tu camino a alguien como ella
laborando en la viña lejana?
La carga de frutas en su espalda,
un sudor amargo en frente y mejillas,
y el peso de la vasija de barro detrás
de su miserable cabeza inclinada.
Tú no la has visto, Hijo del carpintero,
al que llaman el Rey de la Gloria,
entre las escarpadas costas occidentales
con el sudor de su cesta de comida.
Esta primavera y la primavera pasada
y cada una de veinte primaveras desde el principio,
ha cargado las frías algas marinas para alimentar
a sus hijos y obtener la recompensa del castillo.
Y cada uno de los veinte otoños pasados
ha perdido el dorado verano de su lozanía,
y el Trabajo de Negros ha labrado el surco
que cruza la blanca tersura de su frente.
Y Tu benévola iglesia ha hablado
del estado descarriado de su mísera alma,
y el tráfago incesante ha hecho descender
su cuerpo a la negra paz de una sepultura.
Y su tiempo se ha ido como fango negro que
se filtra por el techo de paja de una vivienda pobre;
el arduo Trabajo de Negros fue su herencia;
gris es su sueño esta noche.
Trad. Eva Cruz Yáñez
CALVARY
My eye is not on Calvary
nor on Bethlehem the Blessed,
but on a full-smelling backland in Glasgow,
where life rots as it grows;
and on a room in Edinburgh,
a room of poverty and pain,
where the diseased infant
writhes and wallows till death.
CALVARIO
Mis ojos no están en el Calvario
ni en Belén el Bendito
sino en un pestilente baldío de Glasgow,
donde la vida se pudre al crecer;
y en un cuarto de Edimburgo,
un cuarto de pobreza y dolor,
donde la criatura enferma
se retuerce y revuelca hasta la muerte.
Trad. Eva Cruz Yáñez
GOING WESTWARDS
I go westwards in the Desert
with my shame on my shoulders,
that I was made a laughing-stock
since I was as my people were.
Love and the greater error,
deceiving honour spoiled me,
with a film of weakness on my vision,
squinting at man’s kind extremity.
From me the Island
when the moon rises on Quattara,
far from the Pine Headland
when the morning ruddiness is on the Desert.
Camus Alba is far from me
and so is the bondage of Europe
far from me in the North-West
the most beautiful grey-blue eyes.
Far from me the Island
and every loved image in Scotland,
there is a foreign sand in History
spoiling the machines of the mind.
Far from me Belsen and Dachau,
Rotterdam, the Clyde and Prague,
and Dimitrov before a court
hitting fear with the thump of hid laugh.
Guernica itself is very far
from the innocent corpses of the Nazis
who are lying in the gravel
and in the kaki sand of the Desert.
There is no rancour in my heart
against the hardy soldiers of the Enemy,
but the kingship that there is among
men in prison on a tidal rock
waiting for the sea flowing
and making cold the warm stone;
and the coldness of life
in the hot sun of the Desert.
But this is the struggle not to be avoided,
the sore extreme of human-kind,
and though I do not hate Rommel’s army
the brain’s eye is not squinting.
And be what was as it was,
I am of the big men of Braes,
of the heroic Raasay MacLeods,
of the sharp-sword Mathesons of Lochalsh;
and the men of my name –who were braver
when their ruinous pride was kindled?
RUMBO AL OESTE
Voy rumbo al oeste en el Desierto
con mi vergüenza a cuestas,
porque me hicieron el hazmerreír
por ser como era mi pueblo.
El amor y el error más grande,
el honor ilusorio, me echaron a perder,
una debilidad me nublaba la vista
y entornaba los ojos ante el gran infortunio de la humanidad.
Lejos de mí la Isla
cuando la luna sale en Quattara,
lejos