Pablo Neruda

What Spain Was Like

Spain was a taut, dry drum-head Daily beating a dull thud Flatlands and eagle's nest Silence lashed by the storm. How much, to the point of weeping, in my soul I love your hard soil, your poor bread, Your poor people, how much in the deep place Of my being there is still the lost flower Of your wrinkled villages, motionless in time And your metallic meadows Stretched out in the moonlight through the ages, Now devoured by a false god. All your confinement, your animal isolation While you are still conscious Surrounded by the abstract stones of silence, Your rough wine, your smooth wine Your violent and dangerous vineyards. Solar stone, pure among the regions Of the world, Spain streaked With blood and metal, blue and victorious Proletarian Spain, made of petals and bullets Unique, alive, asleep - resounding. (Translator's note - this poem refers to the time Neruda spent in Spain during the Spanish Civil War which lasted from 1936 to 1939. )