I Have Walked Many Roads

I have walked many roads,

I have found many paths;

I have sailed a hundred seas,

and landed on a hundred shores.

Everywhere I have seen

caravans of sadness,

sober and melancholy

drunk with black shadow,

and pedants of cloth

who look, quietly, and think

that they know, because they do not drink

the wine in the taverns.

Bad people who walk

and in walking soil the land…

And in all the places I have seen

people who dance or play,

when they can, and work

their four spans of land.

Never, when they come to a place,

do they ask where to go.

When they make their way, they ride

on the back of an old mule,

and do not know to hurry

not even on the days of the fiesta.

Where they have wine, they drink wine;

where they have no wine, fresh water.

They are good people who live,

work, pass the time and dream,

and on a day like many,

rest beneath the soil.