From “Spanish Folk Songs”

                  II

Of the dust of the earth 
Can I make songs.
One is scarcely over, 
A new one comes.

Del polvo de la tierra 
Saco yo coplas. 
No bien se acaba una 
Ya tengo otra.
 

                  LV

Like two trees we are
By fate separated.
The road is between
But the boughs are mated.

Como dos árboles somos
Que la suerte nos separa,
Con un camino por medio,
Pero se juntan las ramas.
 

                  CII

I see myself as a crow. 
All are wearing clothes of gladness, 
Clothed in black mourning I go.

Me comparo con el cuervo. 
Todos visten de alegría, 
Yo visto de luto negro.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on September 7, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.

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Spanish Folk Songs was first published in 1922 by Houghton Mifflin Company. In “The Spanish People as Poet,” published in Poetry: A Magazine in Verse, Vol. 22, No. 2, Muna Lee reviewed De Madariaga’s book and wrote, “This poet is the Spanish people, selections from whose poetry are here grouped according to mood; the current rising among some charming satiric and occasional pieces, deepening in a dramatic group which makes one wonder why, since a story can be adequately told in four lines, the novel was ever invented […]. In this popular poetry, assonance almost entirely displaces rhyme; and the favorite model is the cuarteta, a song consisting of a single stanza of four lines of which 1 and 3 are unrhymed and 2 and 4 assonanced. Numerous variations of the cuarteta, together with the solea, of three lines, the alegría, of two, and the estribillo, a refrain of three, are illustrated in the scholarly and informative preface. These forms have frequently been borrowed by the modernist poets […].”