Extremadura

…throught a poem

The train is rolling by the rails of the tracks.

Robust oaks that scatter around the trunk dry leaves tremble.

Yokes flee when the black creature rattles whistling .

A clod is broken and smoke fights with branches of oaks where it tangles...

You, who run away I don't know where

not even staying on the rail your tracks,you, who looked out the windows

see the gloomy and arrogant pastures and the deep tracks with its streams and the skinny and arrogant field where some farmhands with the color of the land chew their bread

You, who are waiting for your readings and are so know-it-all in sciences

that maybe you are able to say by heart poems about Extremaduran feats

that we left without narrating after making.

You, who are in the iron horse that resounds and clatters,

Don't you feel passing by the very heart of our land

something like a strong desire of damaging

all the wheels of the iron horse

to stay here, with us to soften our sorrows just a little,

to chew our bread and soak up

the salt of the sweat that steeps us?

You, running, running too much

not even staying on the rails your tracks,

You, just as the train going through life,rumbling and fast ...

If you can not stop, put in the bag

this piece of notebook

and when you cross our land look at the sky,

and then to the ground.

And after looking at us with love, begin to read;

because the notebook will speak of our wills,

our enjoyments, our sorrows,

very strong and very deep wisecracks

and some little things very sweet and very tender.

And it will say to you as we speak,

we, the sons of this land,

because we speak like this: jierro, jumo,

and jacha and jigo and jiguera.

And it will say that we are good

that our life is good,

in the peace of a life full of work

and with the pain of a life full of miseries.

The crumb we Extremaduran people take under the crust!

Because we are like that, we are brown,

with the color of the ground,

the grandchildren of those courageous men that in other days

triumphed in America.