Spanish Nights – Translations

Fine cloth in the shop, if it should be stained,

so must be sold for less, for it has lost its worth. Alas!

Whoever has a roof made of glass should never throw stones at a neighbor's house;

multeers we are — and somewhere along the road we may yet meet again.

For your great faithlessness I compare you to a coin that passes from hand to hand;

in time it wears smooth, and taken for counterfeit, no one will accept it.

To see whether I might be comforted, I leaned against a green pine, hoping it would console me.

Seeing me weep, it wept as well; and the pine, being green and living, wept to see me weeping.

They say we do not love each other because they never see us speak; let them ask your heart and mine, and they will learn the truth.

Now I take my leave of you, of your house and your window; and though your mother may object — goodbye, my girl, until tomorrow... though your mother may object.

Sleep, child, sleep — sleep, my soul; sleep, little bright star of the morning.

Lullaby, lullaby; sleep, little bright star of the morning.

For traitors, your eyes — I would bury them; you do not know, child, what it costs to gaze into them.

"Mother on the shore, Mother..."

They say you do not love me — yet once you did; let what was gained be surrendered for what is lost.

"Mother on the shore, Mother..."

Alas! I keep a sorrow in my breast that I will tell to no one.

Cursed be love, cursed — and the one who made me know it. Alas!

On the hillside, there beyond the graves, a beautiful palm — like a plume of green — lifts its crown, where each evening the doves come to nest and find shelter.

But in the morning they leave the branches; like a necklace unstrung, they scatter through the blue air, all white, and settle farther off upon some distant roof.

My soul is the tree where, each evening like them, white swarms of restless visions fall from the heavens, wings trembling — only to take flight again at the first light of dawn.

It is not you, no, madame, who I love — nor you, Juliette, nor you, Ophelia, nor Beatrix, nor even fair-haired Laura with her great gentle eyes.

The one I love now is in China; she lives there with her aged parents in a tower of delicate porcelain, beside the Yellow River where the cormorants gather.

Her eyes lift toward her temples; her foot is small enough to rest within the hand; her skin is paler than lamplight copper; her nails are long and stained with carmine.

Through her lattice she leans her head, where passing swallows brush her in flight; and each evening, like a poet, she sings of the willow and the peach blossom.

A skirt drawn tight across her hips, a towering comb in her hair, a lively leg and a dainty foot, eyes of fire, pale skin, and gleaming teeth —

Alza! Olà! — behold the true Manola.

Bold in gesture, free in speech, scattering wit and spice with both hands, caring nothing for tomorrow, capricious in love and wild in grace —

Alza! Olà! — behond the true Manola.

Singing, dancing to castanets, and a the bullfights judging the toreros' blows — all the while smoking cigarettes —

Alza! Olà — behold the true Manola.

From the finest strand of hair woven into your braid, I would fashion a chain to draw you close to my side.

I would wish to be a water-jar in your house, little one — so I might kiss your lips whenever you came to drink.

Heart, why do you pass the nights of love awake, when the one who owns you lies resting in another's arms?

An old woman costs a dollar, and a young girl just two cents — and since I am so poor, I go for the cheaper bargain.

With the vito, vito, vito — with the vito, vito, va.

Don't you go tickling me, or I'll blush bright red.

Don't look at me, little girl — oh! — or I shall melt to pieces.

Four priests carry her off — they carry her off to bury her; four priests take her away with the vito, vito, va.

They're carrying off my mother-in-law — oh, the laughter it gives me!

With the vito, vito, vito — oh! that I shall never see her again!

Instrumental

Now that I leave this world, before I render my account to God, here — between the two of us — I will tell you my confession:

With all my soul I forgive even those I have always hated;

but you — whom I have loved so deeply — I will never forgive!

Ah! I feel you nearer to me the more I flee from you, for your image within me is the shadow of my own thought.

Tell it to me again today — for yesterday, enraptured, I listened without hearing you and looked at you without seeing.

As night fell on that day, she — far from me — said: "Why do you come so close? I am afraid of you!"

And after the night had passed, she said — now close beside me: "Why do you draw so far away? I am afraid without you!"

"I will love you, goddess Venus, if you prefer that I love you long and sensibly."

And the goddess of Cythera replied: "I prefer — like all women — to be loved a short time, and madly."

"I will love you, goddess Venus — I will love you."

Ay! I do not know what I feel, nor what comes over me when that cursed woman is gone from me.

Ay, Candela — you who burn... yet hell itself burns less fiercely than all my blood set aflame with jealousy!

Ay! When the river murmurs — what is it trying to say? That loving another woman, he forgets me.

Ay! When the fire rises... when the river speaks... if water cannot quench the flames, then grief itself condemns me.

Love poisons me — and sorrow itself is killing me.

Instrumental

Just like the will-o'-the-wisp — so, exactly, is love.

Just like the phantom flame — so, exactly, is love.

You flee from it and it pursues you; you call to it and it runs away...

Just like the will-o'-the-wisp — so, exactly, is love.

Accursed be the dark eyes that ever came to see it!

Accursed be the dark eyes that ever beheld it!

Accursed the sorrowful heart that longed to burn within its flame!

For like the will-o'-the-wisp, love itself fades into nothing.