El niño yuntero - Miguel Hernández

https://inmademiguel.com/el-nino-yunt... The Child Ploughman Miguel Hernández The poem "The Child Ploughman," by Miguel Hernández, belongs to his book Viento del pueblo (1937) and is a profound social denunciation framed within the context of rural, peasant Spain at the beginning of the 20th century. It is a poem that denounces child exploitation, showing how peasant children are born destined for suffering and labor. From birth, marked by the yoke, these children are dehumanized and treated as tools for survival, condemned to an existence of suffering and endless work. The poem describes the close relationship between the child and the land, not as something harmonious, but as a constant struggle. Through powerful and dramatic imagery, Hernández presents the child molded by physical effort ("strong by blows") and deprived of his childhood, while death appears as a constant presence in his life, symbolizing the extreme sacrifice of his condition. In the final verses, the poet raises a cry for justice, appealing to collective action to liberate the oppressed. The hammer, as a symbol of revolution, represents the hope of breaking the chains of exploitation that weigh upon the farm laborers. Miguel Hernández combines emotive and committed lyricism to bring this heartbreaking reality to light and demand dignity for the most disadvantaged, leaving a message that transcends his time. Born to the yoke, more humiliated than beautiful, with his neck pursued by the yoke. He is born, like the tool, destined for blows, from a discontented land and a dissatisfied plow. Amidst the pure and living dung of cows, he brings to life an olive-colored soul already old and calloused. He begins to live, and begins to die from end to end lifting the bark of his mother with the yoke. He begins to feel, and he feels life as a war and toils wearily on the bones of the earth. He doesn't know how to count his years, and he already knows that sweat is a heavy crown of salt for the farmer. He works, and while he works, manly serious, he anoints himself with rain and adorns himself with the flesh of the graveyard. By force of blows, strong, and by force of sun, burnished, with a deathly ambition he tears apart a hard-won loaf of bread. Each new day he is more root, less creature, who listens beneath his feet to the voice of the grave. And like a root he sinks slowly into the earth so that the earth may flood his brow with peace and bread. This hungry child pains me like a great thorn, and his ashen life stirs my oak-like soul. I see him plowing the stubble, and devouring a crust of bread, and declaring with his eyes why he is destined for the yoke. His plow strikes my chest, and his life chokes me, and I suffer seeing the fallow land so vast beneath his feet. Who will save this child, smaller than a grain of oats? From where will the executioner's hammer break this chain come? Let it come from the hearts of the day laborers, who before being men are and have been plowboys. Theme music: Celebration by Yakov Goldman Background music: Prelude No. 3 / Op. 58-3 by Morishige Takei MIDI by: http://www.guitarsound.net/elixir/ If any author, illustrator, or publisher holds the rights to any text or image appearing in these poems and does not wish for them to be displayed on this channel, please write to [email protected] and request their removal.