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TO SMILE WITH THE SAD JOY OF THE OLIVE-TREE

To smile with the sad joy of the olive-tree.
To wait. Never to tire of hoping for joy.
We smile. We gild the light of every day
with this sad joyful vanity of being alive.

Every day I feel freer and more a captive
of that full smile so clear and so shadowed.
Tempests blow over your frozen mouth
while over mine still blows a summer breeze.

A smile rises up over the abyss: grows
like a tremulous abyss, bravely winged.
A smile lifts warmly upwards in flight.

Diurnal, firm, it arrives, no fall, no darkening.
You defy all things, love: you scale them all.
In a smile you were both earth and heaven.

autógrafo

Miguel Hernández
Translation by A. S. Kline


«Cancionero y romancero de ausencias» (1938-1941)  
«Poemas últimos» (1939-1941)


español Original version

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