Poet Antonio Muchado; singer Joan Martin Serrat
I want to point out that a Spanish pilgrim quoted the great Spanish poet, Antonio Muchado, briefly, over dinner. He said something close to, "Wanderer, there is no road; there is only the foam upon the sea."
Translating it is problematic; I've spent quite a few hours doing exactly that. As poetry, the linkages between the words is often inexplicit. For instance, the foam upon the sea is a ship's wake; a ship goes where there are no roads, marks its path with a wake of foam, and a few minutes later even that path has disappeared. The whole part about foam is, in the poem, simply "there is only foam upon the sea" and you have to figure out what the poet meant.
One part of one translation runs, “Wanderer, your footsteps are the road, and nothing more; wanderer, there is no road, the road is made by walking. By walking one makes the road. . . ."
The famous Spanish singer Joan Manuel Serrat adapted it into one of the most popular Spanish hits ever, in 1972. Here is a performance of it in 1987:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lj-W6D2LSlo
And another performance in 2010, which in some ways has more depth of expression:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFH6c3qQnP8&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PL203A1A9003B41246
The poem, and the song, have deeply moved many millions of people; and me in particular, because I closely associate them with my Dad's death in 1970, and with two very special ladies I knew in 1972; and an original poem I wrote, "Caryatid" (Blow on blow, verse on verse.)
Having said more about it than you probably care about, I will leave off without giving you my translation, which if memory serves is nearly 40 lines.
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On a completely different note-- Remember when they meet Jack the Irishman in a hay field, and he goes on and on (and on and on!) about the nature of roads? I think they missed the pun of a lifetime when they failed to call him a "road scholar."
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Pretend something clever is written here.