Poetry · A way to begin
My Country
Patria
Ricardo Miró · 1909
Synopsis
Far from his country, the poet addresses his homeland, so small, stretched on an isthmus between two seas, whose whole music resounds in him like the sea in a shell. He admits that he might never have known how much he loved it had fate not sent him beyond the ocean, and says what it is to him: memories, pieces of life, the rustling palm, the music he learned, the old paths of childhood.
Context
The poem was written in Barcelona, where its author was consul of Panama, and appeared on 1 September 1909 in issue 50 of Nuevos Ritos, six years after the separation from Colombia. It has eight stanzas of fourteen-syllable lines split in two, with alternating rhymes, one of them of five lines and one a refrain. The poet sets against the golden towers of the foreign city the old trunk on which he carved a date and the bell towers of his country. Rafael Ruiloba has noted a second version, corrected under pressure from critics, which changes the poem's ending.
Who it is for
A short poem, in Spanish, which can be found in full on Wikisource; an English translation by Tom Pow, My Country, was broadcast by the BBC in 2012.
Prizes and reception
The emblematic poem of the man regarded as the national poet of Panama; the country's main literary competition bears his name.
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