Spain, wrapped in sleep, waking
like hair among wheat-spikes,
I saw you born, perhaps among brambles
and darkness, peasant,
saw you rise among oaks and mountains
and travel the air with your open veins.
But I saw you attacked in the corners
by the ancient bandits. They walked
masked, with their crosses made
of vipers, with their feet mired
in the glacial swamp of the dead.
Then I saw your body freed
from thickets, broken
on the bloodied sand, open,
abandoned, goaded in agony.
Still today the water of your stones
flows among the dungeons, and you endure
your crown of thorns in silence,
to see who lasts longer, your silence
or the faces that pass without looking at you.
I lived with your dawn of rifles,
and I long for people and gunpowder
to shake the dishonored branches again
till the dream trembles and the divided fruits
are reunited in the earth.