Nikola Vaptsarov: Spain

Nikola Vaptsarov

(1909-1942)

 

Spain

 

What were you to me?

Nothing.

A land forgotten and remote,

a land of knights and high plateaux.

What were you to me?

The hearth

where blazed a strange and cruel love,

a wild intoxicant

of blood,

of glinting blades

and serenades,

of passion,

jealousy

and psalms.

 

Now you are my destiny,

now I live and share your fate.

In your struggle to be free

wholly I participate.

 

Now I’m stirred, now I rejoice

at all your victories in the fight.

In your youth and strength I trust

and my own strength with yours unite.

 

Crouching in machine-gun nests,

I fight on to victory,

down among Toledo’s streets,

on the outskirts of Madrid.

 

A worker in a cotton shirt

torn by bullets near me lies,

Ceaselessly the warm blood streams

from the cap pulled o’er his eyes.

 

It is my blood that I feel humming

through my veins, as suddenly

in him I recognize the friend

I once knew in a factory

 

where we shoveled coal together,

stoking the same furnace fire,

and found there was no barrier

to check our young and bold desire.

 

Sleep, my comrade, sleep in peace!

Though now the blood the blood-red flag be furled,

your blood into mine will pass

and stir the peoples of the world.

 

The blood you gave, already flows

through village, factory, town and state,

arouses, urges and inspires

all working men to demonstrate.

 

That workers never will lose heart,

but will advance relentlessly,

determined both to work and fight

and shed their blood that men be free.

 

Today your blood builds barricades,

infuses courage in our hearts,

and with a reckless joy proclaims:

"Madrid is ours!

            Madrid is ours!"

 

The world is ours! Friend, have no fear!

The whole expanding universe

its ours!

 

Beneath the southern sky

sleep

        and have faith,

                have faith in us!

 

Nikola Vaptsarov poetry

kempis poetry magazine

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