Log in

Editor's Picks

Group by Sequoiadendron giganteum
From Davis to Los Angeles
Chris Reynolds | Oct 30, 2024
Group photo at Otay Mountains
From Los Angeles to the Otay Mountains
John Leszczynski | Oct 30, 2024
Quercus boyntonii Conservation Plan
Partners at The Morton Arboretum, in collaboration with...
Website Editor | Oct 29, 2024

Plant Focus

Quercus dumosa acorn
Animals, plants, and fungi depend on this humble tree, but its future—and theirs—is all but certain.

"Las Encinas" by Antonio Machado

A new entry in our series on Oak Poetry, this poem by Antonio Machado describes the holm oaks of his native Spain (Quercus rotundifolia and Q. ilex). The common name in Spanish for these trees is encina, which derives from the Latin word ilex, and which originally referred to these oaks, not to hollies. The translation of encina is problematic: "holm oak" is clumsy and is not sufficiently distinct from the trees referred to in the poem as roble (oak, i.e., Q. robur). Some translators have used "ilex", but that can be confused with holly. The translation below chooses to retain the Spanish word encina (en-SEE-nah), which should be understood to refer mostly to Q. rotundifolia, the species found in most of the interior of Spain. The encinas described in the poem as growing by the sea near Santander would likely be Q. ilex.

If you would like to propose a poem for inclusion in this series, please click here.

Las Encinas

A los señores de Masriera,
en recuerdo de una expedición a El Pardo.

¡Encinares castellanos
en laderas y altozanos,
serrijones y colinas
llenos de oscura maleza,
encinas, pardas encinas;
humildad y fortaleza!

Mientras que llenándoos va
el hacha de calvijares,
¿nadie cantaros sabrá,
encinares?

El roble es la guerra, el roble
dice el valor y el coraje,
rabia inmoble
en su torcido ramaje;
y es más rudo
que la encina, más nervudo,
más altivo y más señor.

El alto roble parece
que recalca y ennudece
su robustez como atleta
que, erguido, afinca en el suelo.

El pino es el mar y el cielo
y la montaña: el planeta.
La palmera es el desierto,
el sol y la lejanía:
la sed; una fuente fría
soñada en el campo yerto.

Las hayas son la leyenda.
Alguien, en las viejas hayas,
leía una historia horrenda
de crímenes y batallas.

¿Quién ha visto sin temblar
un hayedo en un pinar?
Los chopos son la ribera,
liras de la primavera,
cerca del agua que fluye,
pasa y huye,
viva o lenta,
que se emboca turbulenta
o en remanso se dilata.
En su eterno escalofrío
copian del agua del río
las vivas ondas de plata.

De los parques las olmedas
son las buenas arboledas
que nos han visto jugar,
cuando eran nuestros cabellos
rubios y, con nieve en ellos,
nos han de ver meditar.

Tiene el manzano el olor
de su poma,
el eucalipto el aroma
de sus hojas, de su flor
el naranjo la fragancia;
y es del huerto
la elegancia
el ciprés oscuro y yerto.

¿Qué tienes tú, negra encina
campesina,
con tus ramas sin color
en el campo sin verdor;
con tu tronco ceniciento
sin esbeltez ni altiveza,
con tu vigor sin tormento,
y tu humildad que es firmeza?

En tu copa ancha y redonda
nada brilla,
ni tu verdioscura fronda
ni tu flor verdiamarilla.

Nada es lindo ni arrogante
en tu porte, ni guerrero,
nada fiero
que aderece su talante.
Brotas derecha o torcida
con esa humildad que cede
sólo a la ley de la vida,
que es vivir como se puede.

El campo mismo se hizo
árbol en ti, parda encina.
Ya bajo el sol que calcina,
ya contra el hielo invernizo,
el bochorno y la borrasca,
el agosto y el enero,
los copos de la nevasca,
los hilos del aguacero,
siempre firme, siempre igual,
impasible, casta y buena,
¡oh tú, robusta y serena,
eterna encina rural
de los negros encinares
de la raya aragonesa
y las crestas militares
de la tierra pamplonesa;
encinas de Extremadura,
de Castilla, que hizo a España,
encinas de la llanura,
del cerro y de la montaña;
encinas del alto llano
que el joven Duero rodea,
y del Tajo que serpea
por el suelo toledano;
encinas de junto al mar
—en Santander—, encinar
que pones tu nota arisca,
como un castellano ceño,
en Córdoba la morisca,
y tú, encinar madrileño,
bajo Guadarrama frío,
tan hermoso, tan sombrío,
con tu adustez castellana
corrigiendo,
la vanidad y el atuendo
y la hetiquez cortesana!...
Ya sé, encinas
campesinas,
que os pintaron, con lebreles
elegantes y corceles,
los más egregios pinceles,
y os cantaron los poetas
augustales,
que os asordan escopetas
de cazadores reales;
mas sois el campo y el lar
y la sombra tutelar
de los buenos aldeanos
que visten parda estameña,
y que cortan vuestra leña
con sus manos.

The Encinas

To Professors Masriera,
in memory of an expedition to El Pardo.

Encina forests of Castile
on hillsides and hummocks,
knolls and peaks
full of dark wild woods,
encinas, dun encinas;
humility and strength!

While the axe continues
to wound you with clearings,
will no one sing your story,
forests of encinas?

The oak is war, the oak
tells of valor and courage,
immobile wrath
in its twisted branches;
the oak is rougher
than the encina, more sinewy;
haughtier and more lordly.

The tall oak seems
to stress and tighten
its robustness like an athlete,
who, erect, stays his ground.

The pine is sea and sky
and mountain: the planet.
The palm is the desert,
the sun and the distance:
the palm is thirst; a cool fountain
dreamed up in the barren field.

The beeches are a legend.
Someone, in the ancient beeches,
read a horrendous story
of crimes and battles.

Who has seen without trembling
a stand of beeches in a forest of pines?
The poplars are the riverside,
lyres of springtime,
by the water that flows,
passes by and flees,
quick or slow,
that narrows into turbulence
or spreads into a pool.
In their eternal shiver
they copy the river’s
bright silver waves.

Elms in parks
are the fine trees
that have seen us at play,
when our hair was
blond and, once tinged with snow,
they will watch as we ponder.

The apple tree bears
the scent of its fruit,
the eucalypt the smell
of its leaves, the orange
the fragrance of its blossom;
and the dark
and barren cypress
is a garden’s elegance.

So what do you have, dark encina
of our countryside,
with your colorless branches
in the desolate fields;
with your ashen trunk
lacking grace or arrogance,
with your easy vigor,
and the steadfastness of your poverty.

In your wide, round canopy
nothing shines,
not your dark green foliage
nor your pale yellow flowers.

Nothing is pretty or arrogant
in your mien, nothing warlike,
nothing fierce
to adorn your appearance.
You grow straight or twisted
with that humility that bends
only to the law of life,
which is to live as one can.

The land itself became in you
a tree, dark encina.
Under the scorching sun,
under winter’s ice,
the sweltering and the squall,
in August and in January,
the flakes of a snowstorm,
the lashings of a downpour,
ever firm, ever immutable,
impassive, chaste and good,
oh you, robust and serene,
eternal and rural encina
of the dark encina forests
of eastern Aragón
and Pamplona’s
martial hilltops;
encinas of Extremadura,
of Castile, which made Spain,
encinas of the plains,
of the hills and the mountains;
encinas of the highlands
encircled by the young Duero,
and of the Tagus that meanders
through the land of Toledo;
encinas by the sea
—in Santander—, encinas
that frown like
a Castilian scowl
on Moorish Córdoba,
and you, encinas of Madrid,
under cold Guadarrama,
so beautiful, so somber,
correcting with your
Castilian severity
the court’s vanity and flamboyance
and the courtiers’ ague!...
I know, encinas
of our countryside,
that the most illustrious brushes
painted you
with elegant greyhounds and steeds,
and renowned poets
claimed
you were deafened
by the guns of royal hunters;
but you are the fields and the hearth
and the guardian shade
of the good villagers
who wear brown serge,
and for firewood crack your branches 
with their hands.

 

Encinas 5 km esast of Chillón
Encinas (Quercus rotundifolia) some 5 km east of the village of Chillón in Castilla-La Mancha, close to the border with Extremadura © Roderick Cameron

Translation: Roderick Cameron

Other English translations of the poem:

The Ilexes, translated by Stanley Applebaum

The Ilexes, in Versions from Antonio Machado by Charles Tomlinson


Antonio Machado (26 July 1875 – 22 February 1939) was a Spanish poet and one of the leading figures of the Spanish literary movement known as the Generation of '98.