What Spain Was Like Pablo Neruda

Spain was a taut, dry drum-head
Daily beating a dull thud
Flatlands and eagle's nest
Silence lashed by the storm
How much, to the point of weeping, in my soul
I love your hard soil, your poor bread
Your poor people, how much in the deep place
Of my being there is still the lost flower
Of your wrinkled villages, motionless in time
And your metallic meadows
Stretched out in the moonlight through the ages
Now devoured by a false god

All your confinement, your animal isolation
While you are still conscious
Surrounded by the abstract stones of silence
Your rough wine, your smooth wine
Your violent and dangerous vineyards

Solar stone, pure among the regions
Of the world, Spain streaked
With blood and metal, blue and victorious
Proletarian Spain, made of petals and bullets
Unique, alive, asleep - resounding