Caminante, son tus huellas
el camino, y nada más;caminante, no hay camino,se hace camino al andar.Al andar se hace camino,y al volver la vista atrásse ve la senda que nuncase ha de pisar.Caminante, no hay camino,sino estelas en la mar.
It's hard to translate this poem, as it is all poems, so I don't think I'm going to try. But the poet, Antonio Machado, writes of an adventurer, a walker, who can't turn back. He looks back but his footsteps have disappeared - he can only go forward. I remember memorizing this poem sophomore year of high school in Spanish class, and one interpretation of it was taking full advantage of life and your path and everything that is going on because you can't turn back.
After reading this poem with my group at the tomb of Antonio Machado, I discovered another interpretation - more serious, "muy heavy" like my friend Gemma says. Machado was poet exiled during the Civil War, fleeing to the refugee camps in France that were actually like concentration camps. He died here in Collioure, and we visited his tomb a few days before the day he died. He was a symbol for the many people who fleed Spain, especially the intellectuals and artists. For Machado, he couldn't and wouldn't ever turn back. He made that serious pilgrimage to France only to look back and see his steps erased forever. 
For the rest of the day, we became our own caminantes and adventures. Wandering around with Katie and my mom (!) we found a summer village sleeping the winter but still brilliant with color. A beach with a crepe place right on the water. An old castle that we could wander around. And the best part, from the castle I spotted a windmill, and we really started to walk, just in the direction we thought it would be. Luckily for us, we our footsteps didn't disappear because we had to retrace our path a few times to find this mysterious windmill, but we finally reach it after hiking up a park full of olive trees!
No comments:
Post a Comment