Allspirit Poetry

Selections from the poetry of Antonio Machado

Sorrow, it is not true that I know you

    Sorrow, it is not true that I know you; 
you are the nostalgia for a good life, 
and the aloneness of the soul in shadow, 
the sailing ship without wreck and without guide.

    Like an abandoned dog who cannot find 
a smell or a track and roams 
along the roads, with no road, like 
the child who in a night of the fair

    gets lost among the crowd, 
and the air is dusty, and the candles 
fluttering,-astounded, his heart 
weighed down by music and by pain;

that's how I am, drunk, sad by nature, 
a mad and lunar guitarist, a poet, 
and an ordinary man lost in dreams, 
searching constantly for God among the mists.

~Antonio Machado