A Sentimental Education

Sometimes I am asked about my influences or my education, and I sometimes ask others for the same. I am not sure what we expect to find. Causes and effects are usually separated by years and events; a bent here; a twist there; a fear, for instance, that reacts with an image or a song to make a new emotional compound and part of a personality. The stories we build to make sense of what happens or happened are fictions, always oversimplified and often misunderstood.

In 1978, Pablo and I had a sleepover and as part of the rituals we ate late, talked—mostly lied—about girls, and played records. I think Pablo had gotten the records from his father. Through the night Paco Ibañez, Silvio Rodriguez and Joan Manuel Serrat sang and we listened pretending to be more mature than we were; at fourteen we could still take ourselves seriously. At some point we played Serrat’s record devoted to the poems of Miguel Hernandez and laid on the floor looking up at the ceiling, in silence. Since then “Umbrío por la pena” has been an ongoing education.


UMBRIO POR LA PENA
Umbrío por la pena, casi bruno,

porque la pena tizna cuando estalla,

donde yo no me hallo no se halla

hombre más apenado que ninguno.

Sobre la pena duermo solo y uno,

pena es mi paz y pena mi batalla,

perro que ni me deja ni se calla,

siempre a su dueño fiel, pero importuno.

Cardos y penas llevo por corona,

cardos y penas siembran sus leopardos

y no me dejan bueno hueso alguno.

No podrá con la pena mi persona
rodeada de penas y de cardos:

¡cuánto penar para morirse uno!

°
Shadowed by sorrow, nearly black
because sorrow soots when it bursts,
where I am not, it is not
the most sorrowed man.

I sleep alone and one on the sorrow,
sorrow is my peace and sorrow my battle;
a dog that neither leaves nor lies quiet,
always faithful, but inopportune.

Thistles and pain I carry as a crown,
thistles and pain sow leopards
that do not leave a bone uncrushed.

Surrounded by sorrow and thistles
my body can bear no more.
So much sorrow only to die!

[In translating this poem I used Ted Genoways translation as a starting point.]