Retrato

My childhood is memories of a courtyard in Seville, and a bright orchard where the lemon tree ripens; my youth, twenty years in the lands of Castile; my story, some cases I don't want to remember. I haven't been a seducer like Mañara, nor a Bradomín - you already know my clumsy attire - but I received the arrow that Cupid assigned to me, and I loved everything they could have of hospitable. There are drops of Jacobin blood in my veins, but my verse springs from a serene source; and more than a man who knows his doctrine, I am, in the good sense of the word, good. I disdain the romances of hollow tenors and the chorus of crickets that sing to the moon. I stop to distinguish the voices from the echoes, and I only listen, among the voices, to one. I converse with the man who always goes with me - he who speaks alone hopes to speak to God one day - my soliloquy is a conversation with this good friend who taught me the secret of philanthropy. And in the end, I owe you nothing; you owe me everything I write, I go to my work, with my money I pay for the clothes that cover me and the mansion I live in, the bread that feeds me and the bed where I lie. And when the day of the final journey arrives, and the ship that will never return is about to depart, you will find me on board lightly packed, almost naked, like the children of the sea.