The early 20th-century Spanish poet Antonio Machado has a beautiful poem about finding one’s way. The translation in this segment is by Anna Rosenwong and María José Giménez. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Antonio Machado Poem”
I’ve been spending some time with the poetry of Antonio Machado, the great Spanish poet who was born in Seville in 1875, and one of his most famous poems is really short. I wanted to share it.
This is a translation by Maria Jose Jimenez and Anna Rosen Wong, and the poem is sort of an answer to an implicit question of what path should I choose?
Wanderer, it’s your steps, the road and nothing more.
Wanderer, there is no road.
You make the road as you go.
As you go, you make the road, and when you turn, you’ll see the path you leave behind, never to walk again.
Wanderer, there is no road, only wakes upon the sea.
And what I love about this poem is that it’s about making life up as you go along, that often you don’t really see the path until you turn around and look at where you’ve been.
That’s right. And there’s the standard template for life isn’t a thing, right?
Yeah. We’re always thinking, what path should I take?
And it’s easy to follow the crowd, too. I think I sense some of that there about being an individual.
Yeah.
