TACORONTE

In this village
The schoolboys draw
Sluggish landscapes of shadow
With greys dying of grief.
The pomp of colors
Here amounts to nothing.
Neither the sunflower of afternoon
In the skies, nor the slope
Of greens uphill,
Nor even the blue lure
Of a rainy foot on the sea
Appear on their palates.
For the man of these fields
Feels his piece of earth
So deep inside himself,
In his closest intimacy,
That when at day's end
He sees his job fulfilled,
The evening grey is already
Ashes of the bonfire
That blazed, while he worked
Without lifting his head.
The sunset's idle show
Neither makes the grass sprout,
Nor satisfies hunger and thirst,
Nor reddems and frees him.
he devotes himself to his hands,
Hands with which he suddenly
Sows, in the same furrow,
His freedom and his censure.
He shares, from the last
Thirsty melancholies,
The equality of seeds
In the bosom of the earth
And that round darkness
Of the womb of harvets
Taking him back to the silence
Of maternal entrails.
Silence of Tacoronte
Hard as stone.
When you move away from
The highway's easy river,
This silence follows you
Like a bulldog
And against him there's no use
Shutting windows and doors.
Wherever you go,
His tongue keeps licking you.
This silence is the must
Fermented by wine-cellars,
The mirror in which rebellions
And sorrows see themselves.
It is the loneliness
Painted by the schoolboys;
It is the heart of man,
His veins pulsing rage;
Alone with ideas inside,
Lonelier, ideas outside.
Silence that never doubts
Treads firmly and tests
What still remains in us
Of island and volcano.
And amidst this silence
That yields to no one,
The night of Tacorante,
Vintageress of stars,
Into the comfort of her
Dark tresses, lets sink
The hands of him who works
And the brow of one who dreams.