Everything is Filled with You

by MIGUEL HERNANDEZ

Translated by DON SHARE 

Everything is filled with you,

and everything is filled with me:

the towns are full,

just as the cemeteries are full

of you, all the houses

are full of me, all the bodies.

I wander down streets losing

things I gather up again:

parts of my life

that have turned up from far away.

I wing myself toward agony,

I see myself dragging

through a doorway,

through creation’s latent depths.

Everything is filled with me:

with something yours and memory

lost, yet found

again, at some other time.

A time left behind

decidedly black,

indelibly red,

golden on your body.

Pierced by your hair,

everything is filled with you,

with something I haven’t found,

but look for among your bones.

Don Share is Senior Editor of Poetry. His books include Squandermania (Salt Publishing), Union (Zoo Press), Seneca in English (Penguin Classics), and most recently a new book of poems, Wishbone (Black Sparrow) and Bunting’s Persia (Flood Editions, a 2012 Guardian Book of the Year).