“The Pounding of Hoes”

Salvador Espriu
trans. by Andrew Kaufman & Sonia Alland

The pounding of hoes — don’t you hear them?
Behind high stone walls,
unceasing, yet slow,
beyond the folds of time.

They tore out the vines. They burned the fresh shoots.
Desert spread across the good earth.
Our old and anxious feet dragged
along the snaking dust-choked riverbed.

Wisdom cried out to fallow fields
and dry, wind-blown reeds:
Look at yourself in me as you approach
the death that waits for you.

Squatting in shadows, hired men
uproot the naked winter vines.
There is not enough light to fill the sky’s vast emptiness.
Just the pounding of hoes in the deepening cold.