Spain was a taut, dry drum-head <br />Daily beating a dull thud <br />Flatlands and eagle's nest <br />Silence lashed by the storm. <br />How much, to the point of weeping, in my soul <br />I love your hard soil, your poor bread, <br />Your poor people, how much in the deep place <br />Of my being there is still the lost flower <br />Of your wrinkled villages, motionless in time <br />And your metallic meadows <br />Stretched out in the moonlight through the ages, <br />Now devoured by a false god. <br /> <br />All your confinement, your animal isolation <br />While you are still conscious <br />Surrounded by the abstract stones of silence, <br />Your rough wine, your smooth wine <br />Your violent and dangerous vineyards. <br /> <br />Solar stone, pure among the regions <br />Of the world, Spain streaked <br />With blood and metal, blue and victorious <br />Proletarian Spain, made of petals and bullets <br />Unique, alive, asleep - resounding.<br /><br />Pablo Neruda<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/what-spain-was-like/
