WHO I WRITE FOR

I

Historians and newsmen and people who are just curious ask me,
Who am I writing for?

I’m not writing for the gentlemen in the stuffy coat, or for his
offended moustache, not even for the warning finger he
raises in the sad ripples of music.

Not for the lady hidden in her carriage (her lorgnette sending its
cold light through the windowpanes).

Perhaps I write for the people who don’t read my poems. That woman
who dashes down the street as if she had to open the doors
for the sunrise.

Or that old fellow nodding on a bench in the little park while the
setting sun takes him with love, wraps him up and dissolves
him, gently, in its light.

For everyone who doesn’t read my writing, all the people who
don’t care about me (though they care for me, without
knowing).

The little girl who glances my way as she passes, my companion on
this adventure, living in the world.

And the old woman who sat in her doorway and watched life and
bore many lives and many weary hands.

I write for the man who’s in love. For the man who walks by with
his pain in his eyes. The man who listens to him. The
man who looked away as he walked by. The man who
finally collapsed when he asked his question and no one
listened.

I write for all of them. I write, mostly, for the people who don’t
read me. Each one and the whole crowd. For the breasts
and the mouths and the ears, the ears that don’t listen, but
keep
my words alive.

II

But I also write for the murderer. For the man who shut his eyes
and threw himself at somebody’s heart and ate death instead
of food and got up crazy.

For the man who puffed himself up into a tower of rage and then
collapsed on the world.

For the dead women and the dead children and the dying men.

For the person who quietly turned on the gas and destroyed the
whole city and the sun rose on a pile of bodies.

For the innocent girl with her smile, her heart, her sweet medallion
(and a plundering army went through there).

And for the plundering army that charged into the sea and sank.

And for those waters, for the infinite sea.

No, not infinite. For the finite sea that has boundaries almost like
our own, like a breathing thing.

(At this point a little boy comes in, jumps in the water, and the
sea, the heart of the sea, is in his pulse!)

And for the last look, the hopelessly limited Last Look, in whose
arms someone falls asleep.

Everyone’s asleep. The murderer and the innocent victim, the boss
and the baby, the damp and the dead, the dried-up old fig
and the wild, bristling hair.

For the bully and the bullied, the good and the sad, the voice with
no substance
and all the substance in the world.

For you, the man with nothing that will turn into a god, who reads
these words without desire.

For you and everything alive inside of you,
I write, and write.

-- Vicente Aleixandre
translated from the Spanish by Lewis Hyde