El niño yuntero [English translation]

The Child of the Plough

Flesh of the yoke, he was born

more humbled than handsome,

with his neck plagued

by the neck-yoke.

He is born, like a tool,

destined to receive the blows

of a discontented land

and an unsatisfied plough.

Amongst dung pure and alive

from cows, he brings into life

a soul the colour of olives,

now old and silent.

He begins to live, and he begins

to die bit by bit

raising the crust

of his mother with the yoked oxen.

He begins to feel, and he feels

life is like a war,

and in his fatigue he knocks

against the bones of the earth.

He cannot count his age,

yet he knows that sweat

is a solemn crown

of salt for the labourer.

He works, and while he works,

serious and masculine,

he is anointed with rain and adorned

with cemetery flesh.

From the blows, strong,

and from the sun, burnished,

with an ambition for death

he tears apart the hard-fought bread.

With each new day he is

more like a root, less like a human being,

listening beneath his feet

the voice of the sepulchre.

And like a root he sinks down

slowly into the earth

so that the earth can flood

his brow with peace and bread.

I am pained by this hungry child,

a skeleton in skin,

and his ashen life

turns over my soul of oak.

I see him plough the stubble,

and devour a scrap of food,

and declare with his eyes

why is he flesh of the yoke.

His plough strikes at my chest,

his life at my throat,

and it pains me to see the earth

so great, so bare beneath his feet.

Who will save this little child,

smaller than an oat grain?

From where will come the hammer

executioner of this chain?

May it come from the hearts

of labouring men,

who before they are men are

and have been children of the plough.