Antonio Machado

 

• Wanderer, your footprints are
  the path, and nothing else;
  wanderer, there is no path,
  the path is made by walking.
  Walking makes the path,
  and on glancing back
  one sees the path
  that must never be trod again.
  Wanderer, there is no path—
  Just your wake in the sea.
  • "Proverbios y cantares XXIX" [Proverbs and Songs 29], Campos de Castilla (1912); trans. Betty Jean Craige in Selected Poems of Antonio Machado (Louisiana State University Press, 1979)