Manuel Aguilera

“You will Come Back to my Garden and my Fig Tree”

2012

Between Calle Acacia and Calle Chopo

Orihuela artist Manuel Aguilera painted this mural as a tribute to Miguel Hernández. The author illustrated a highly original scene depicting the poet’s life as a shepherd in his stable, next to his fig tree with a very originally shaped trunk and a goat. The text above includes some verses from the famous Elegy to Ramon Sijé.

You will come back to my garden and my fig tree:
among the high flowery trellises
your soul will flit like a bee in its hive
sewn with the wax of angels.
You will come back to the murmuring
of farm-workers at their beloveds’ windows.

You will cheer up the shadow over my eyebrows,
and from either side your beloved and the bees
will argue over your blood.

Your heart, now wrinkled velvet,
calls my greedy lovers’ voice
to a field of foaming almonds.

I want to be with you under the winged souls
of the roses of the cream-coloured almond tree,
for we have many things to talk of,
companion of my soul, my companion.