Miguel Hernandez

“My Heart Cannot Carry The Weight”

My heart cannot carry the weight
of your romance and gloomy storm
until my tongue raises the bloodstained
noisy matter that seizes it.

Already my tongue, slow and long, is a heart,
now my heart is a tongue, long and slow…
Do you want to tally up the sorrow? Walk out and count
the sweet specks of embittered sand.

My heart cannot carry more of this misery
with the floating specter of drowning
flying in its blood and sinking without support.

And yesterday, inside yourself, you wrote to me
that you have homesickness, leaning
halfway toward my body, halfway toward the hole.

— translated from the Spanish by Smith