Description
This Spanish poem titled “Caminante, no hay camino” by Antonio Machado was written in 1912 and chosen by conductor Joshua Habermann, who had known the poem a long time. The composer chose to commission a new poem in response to this, from longtime collaborator Julia Klatt Singer. The music represents the distinct journeys people take, eventually uniting the voices in a final verse to symbolize global and human connection.
Text
“Caminante, son tus huellas el camino y nada más; Caminante, no hay camino, se hace camino al andar. Al andar se hace el camino, y al volver la vista atrás se ve la senda que nunca se ha de volver a pisar. Caminante, no hay camino sino estelas en la mar.”
~ Antonio Machado (1912)
Traveler, your footprints
are the only road, nothing else.
Traveler, there is no road;
you make your own path as you walk.
As you walk, you make your own road,
and when you look back
you see the path
you will never travel again.
Traveler, there is no road;
only a ship’s wake on the sea.
Traveler
You watch the water swell and spill,
measure change in the distant blue.
Seeing isn’t believing, but being
carried to shore, in the boat
of your own body. Even if
your footprints wash away
even as rocks are turned to sand
you are shaped by the world.
Carry the wind and the seas
and the mountains and the trees
in each breath, and love
and memory.
~ Julia Klatt Singer (2021)