Poetry Platform - the largest database of poetry, save it to read later!

Poems

Adam Read Poem

A tree of blood soaks the morning
where the newborn woman groans.

Her voice leaves glass in the wound
and on the panes, a diagram of bone.

The coming light establishes and wins
white limits of a fable that forgets
the tumult of veins in flight
toward the dim cool of the apple.

Adam dreams in the fever of the clay
of a child who comes galloping
through the double pulse of his cheek.

But a dark other Adam is dreaming
a neuter moon of seedless stone
where the child of light will burn.

Adivinanza De La Guitarra Read Poem

Guitar Riddle
in the round
crossroads,
six maidens
they dance.

three meat
and three of silver.

The dreams of yesterday search for them
but he has them hugged
a gold Polyphemus.

Guitar!
En la redonda
encrucijada,
seis doncellas
bailan.

Tres de carne
y tres de plata.

Los sueños de ayer las buscan
pero las tiene abrazadas
un Polifemo de oro.

¡La guitarra!

Arbolé, Arbolé . . . Read Poem

Tree, tree
dry and green.

The girl with the pretty face
is out picking olives.

The wind, playboy of towers,
grabs her around the waist.

Four riders passed by
on Andalusian ponies,
with blue and green jackets
and big, dark capes.

"Come to Cordoba, muchacha.

"
The girl won't listen to them.

Three young bullfighters passed,
slender in the waist,
with jackets the color of oranges
and swords of ancient silver.

"Come to Sevilla, muchacha.

"
The girl won't listen to them.

When the afternoon had turned
dark brown, with scattered light,
a young man passed by, wearing
roses and myrtle of the moon.

"Come to Granada, inuchacha.

"
And the girl won't listen to him.

The girl with the pretty face
keeps on picking olives
with the grey arm of the wind
wrapped around her waist.

Tree, tree
dry and green.

——————————————————————————————————-
Original Spanish
Arbolé, arbolé,
seco y verdí.

La niña del bello rostro
está cogiendo aceituna.

El viento, galán de torres,
la prende por la cintura.

Pasaron cuatro jinetes
sobre jacas andaluzas,
con trajes de azul y verde,
con largas capas oscuras.

"Vente a Córdoba, muchacha.

"
La niña no los escucha.

Pasaron tres torerillos
delgaditos de cintura,
con trajes color naranja
y espadas de plata antigua.

"Vente a Córdoba, muchacha.

"
La niña no los escucha.

Cuando la tarde se puso
morada, con lux difusa,
pasó un joven que llevaba
rosas y mirtos de luna.

"Vente a Granada, muchacha.

"
Y la niña no lo escucha.

La niña del bello rostro
sigue cogiendo aceituna,
con el brazo gris del viento
ceñido por la cintura.

Arbolé, arbolé.

Seco y verdé.

Translated by William Logan

Balada Amarilla IV Read Poem

Yellow Ballad IV
Above the sky
I walk from the daisies.

I imagine this afternoon
that I am holy
they gave me the moon
in the hands.

I put it again
in the spaces
and the Lord rewarded me
with the rose and the halo.

Above the sky
I walk from the daisies.

And now I'm going
for this field
to free the girls
of bad gallants
and give gold coins
to all the boys.

Above the sky
I walk from the daisies.

Sobre el cielo
de las margaritas ando.

Yo imagino esta tarde
que soy santo.

Me pusieron la luna
en las manos.

Yo la puse otra vez
en los espacios
y el Señor me premió
con la rosa y el halo.

Sobre el cielo
de las margaritas ando.

Y ahora voy
por este campo
a librar a las niñas
de galanes malos
y dar monedas de oro
a todos los muchachos.

Sobre el cielo
de las margaritas ando.

Ballad Of The Moon Read Poem

translated by Will Kirkland
The moon came into the forge
in her bustle of flowering nard.

The little boy stares at her, stares.

The boy is staring hard.

In the shaken air
the moon moves her amrs,
and shows lubricious and pure,
her breasts of hard tin.

"Moon, moon, moon, run!
If the gypsies come,
they will use your heart
to make white necklaces and rings.

"
"Let me dance, my little one.

When the gypsies come,
they'll find you on the anvil
with your lively eyes closed tight.

"Moon, moon, moon, run!
I can feelheir horses come.

"
"Let me be, my little one,
don't step on me, all starched and white!"
Closer comes the the horseman,
drumming on the plain.

The boy is in the forge;
his eyes are closed.

Through the olive grove
come the gypsies, dream and bronze,
their heads held high,
their hooded eyes.

Oh, how the night owl calls,
calling, calling from its tree!
The moon is climbing through the sky
with the child by the hand.

They are crying in the forge,
all the gypsies, shouting, crying.

The air is veiwing all, views all.

The air is at the viewing.

Ballad of the Moon, Moon Read Poem

The moon came to the forge
wearing a bustle of Spikenards.

The boy is looking at her.

The boy is looking hard.

In the troubled air,
the wind moves her arms,
showing lewd and pure,
her hard, tin breasts.

"Run, moon, moon, moon.

If the gypsies came,
they would make of your heart
necklaces and white rings.

"
"Child, let me dance.

When the gypsies come,
they will find you on the anvil
with your little eyes shut tight.

"
"Run, moon moon moon.

I can hear their horses.

Child, let me be, don't walk
on my starchy white.

"
The rider was drawing closer
playing the drum of the plain.

In the forge the child
has his eyes shut tight.

Bronze and dream, the gypsies
cross the olive grove.

Their heads held high,
their eyes half open.

Ay how the nightjar sings!
How it sings in the tree!
The moon goes through the sky
with a child in her hand.

In the forge the gypsies
wept and cried aloud.

The air is watching, watching.

The air watched all night long.

translation by Will Kirkland and Christopher Mauer (2002) This is an updated version of the original Kirkland translation posted here, done in collaboration with Christopher Mauer.

His newer choice for the word
velando
, which was first translated as "viewing," is now "watching".

Several other translations available on the internet (for example, by Dr.

David K.

Loughran of John Hopkins University) translate it as "watching", as well, and another as "keeping a vigil.

" Ben Harnett's version uses the term "guarding".

Before The Dawn Read Poem

But like love
the archers
are blind
Upon the green night,
the piercing saetas
leave traces of warm
lily.

The keel of the moon
breaks through purple clouds
and their quivers
fill with dew.

Ay, but like love
the archers
are blind!

Cantos Nuevos -- With Translation Read Poem

New Songs -- With Translation
Says the afternoon: "I thirst for shadow!"
The moon says: "I thirst for stars!"
The crystal fountain asks for lips
and the wind sighs.

I thirst for aromas and laughter,
thirst for new songs
without moons and without lilies,
and without dead loves.

A morning song that shakes
to the still pools
of the future and fill with hope
its waves and its muds.

A luminous and restful song
full of thought,
Virgin of sadness and anguish
and virginal of dreams.

Sing without lyrical meat that fills
of laughter the silence
(a flock of blind pigeons
thrown into the mystery).

Sing that goes to the soul of things
and to the soul of the winds
and finally rest in joy
of the eternal heart
~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~
new songs
The afternoon says:
"I'm thirsty for shadow!"
And the moon: "I want stars.

"
The crystal fountain asks for lips,
the wind, for signs.

I'm thirsty for scents and for laughter.

Thirsty for new songs
without irises or moons,
without dead loves.

A morning song that can shiver
quiet backwaters
of the future and fill
their waves and silt with hope.

A luminous and tranquil song
full of thought,
virgin to sadness and anguish,
virgin to reverie.

A song skinned of lyric, filling
silence with laughter.

(A flock of blind doves
tossed into mystery.

)
A song to go to the soul of things
and to the soul of winds,
resting at last in the bliss
of the eternal heart.

Dice la tarde: "¡Tengo sed de sombra!"
Dice la luna: "¡Yo, sed de luceros!"
La fuente cristalina pide labios
y suspira el viento.

Yo tengo sed de aromas y de risas,
sed de cantares nuevos
sin lunas y sin lirios,
y sin amores muertos.

Un cantar de mañana que estremezca
a los remansos quietos
del porvenir.

Y llene de esperanza
sus ondas y sus cienos.

Un cantar luminoso y reposado
pleno de pensamiento,
virginal de tristeza y de angustias
y virginal de ensueños.

Cantar sin carne lírica que llene
de risas el silencio
(una bandada de palomas ciegas
lanzadas al misterio).

Cantar que vaya al alma de las cosas
y al alma de los vientos
y que descanse al fin en la alegría
del corazón eterno.

~~~   ~~~   ~~~   ~~~   ~~~   ~~~   ~~~   ~~~   ~~~
New Songs
The afternoon says:
"I'm thirsty for shadow!"
And the moon: "I want stars.

"
The crystal fountain asks for lips,
the wind, for sighs.

I'm thirsty for scents and for laughter.

Thirsty for new songs
without irises or moons,
without dead loves.

A morning song that can shiver
quiet backwaters
of the future and fill
their waves and silt with hope.

A luminous and tranquil song
full of thought,
virgin to sadness and anguish,
virgin to reverie.

A song skinned of lyric, filling
silence with laughter.

(A flock of blind doves
tossed into mystery.

)
A song to go to the soul of things
and to the soul of winds,
resting at last in the bliss
of the eternal heart.

Thanks to Oldpoetry reader ea for sourcing the translation.

City That Does Not Sleep Read Poem

In the sky there is nobody asleep.

Nobody, nobody.

Nobody is asleep.

The creatures of the moon sniff and prowl about their cabins.

The living iguanas will come and bite the men who do not dream,
and the man who rushes out with his spirit broken will meet on the
street corner
the unbelievable alligator quiet beneath the tender protest of the
stars.

Nobody is asleep on earth.

Nobody, nobody.

Nobody is asleep.

In a graveyard far off there is a corpse
who has moaned for three years
because of a dry countryside on his knee;
and that boy they buried this morning cried so much
it was necessary to call out the dogs to keep him quiet.

Life is not a dream.

Careful!  Careful!  Careful!
We fall down the stairs in order to eat the moist earth
or we climb to the knife edge of the snow with the voices of the dead
dahlias.

But forgetfulness does not exist, dreams do not exist;
flesh exists.

Kisses tie our mouths
in a thicket of new veins,
and whoever his pain pains will feel that pain forever
and whoever is afraid of death will carry it on his shoulders.

One day
the horses will live in the saloons
and the enraged ants
will throw themselves on the yellow skies that take refuge in the
eyes of cows.

Another day
we will watch the preserved butterflies rise from the dead
and still walking through a country of gray sponges and silent boats
we will watch our ring flash and roses spring from our tongue.

Careful!  Be careful!  Be careful!
The men who still have marks of the claw and the thunderstorm,
and that boy who cries because he has never heard of the invention
of the bridge,
or that dead man who possesses now only his head and a shoe,
we must carry them to the wall where the iguanas and the snakes
are waiting,
where the bear's teeth are waiting,
where the mummified hand of the boy is waiting,
and the hair of the camel stands on end with a violent blue shudder.

Nobody is sleeping in the sky.

Nobody, nobody.

Nobody is sleeping.

If someone does close his eyes,
a whip, boys, a whip!
Let there be a landscape of open eyes
and bitter wounds on fire.

No one is sleeping in this world.

No one, no one.

I have said it before.

No one is sleeping.

But if someone grows too much moss on his temples during the
night,
open the stage trapdoors so he can see in the moonlight
the lying goblets, and the poison, and the skull of the t

Dawn Read Poem

Dawn in New York has
four columns of mire
and a hurricane of black pigeons
splashing in the putrid waters.

Dawn in New York groans
on enormous fire escapes
searching between the angles
for spikenards of drafted anguish.

Dawn arrives and no one receives it in his mouth
because morning and hope are impossible there:
sometimes the furious swarming coins
penetrate like drills and devour abandoned children.

Those who go out early know in their bones
there will be no paradise or loves that bloom and die:
they know they will be mired in numbers and laws,
in mindless games, in fruitless labors.

The light is buried under chains and noises
in the impudent challenge of rootless science.

And crowds stagger sleeplessly through the boroughs
as if they had just escaped a shipwreck of blood.

Debussy [with English translation] Read Poem

Debussy [with English translation]
my shadow goes silent
by the water of the acecia.

By my shadow are the frogs
deprived of the stars
The shadow commands my body
reflections of still things.

My shadow goes like immense
cinife violet color.

A hundred crickets want to gild
the light of the reed
A light is born in my chest,
reflected, from the ditch.

~~~~~~~
My shadow glides in silence
over the watercourse.

On account of my shadow
the frogs are deprived of stars.

The shadow sends my body
reflections of quiet things.

My shadow moves like a huge
violet-colored mosquito.

A hundred crickets are trying
to gild the glow of the reeds.

A glow rises in my breast,
the one mirrored in the water.

Mi sombra va silenciosa
por el agua de la acecia.

Por mi sombra están las ranas
privadas de las estrellas.

La sombra manda a mi cuerpo
reflejos de cosas quietas.

Mi sombra va como inmenso
cínife color violeta.

Cien grillos quieren dorar
la luz de la cañavera.

Una luz nace en mi pecho,
reflejado, de la acequia.

~~~~~~~
My shadow glides in silence
over the watercourse.

On account of my shadow
the frogs are deprived of stars.

The shadow sends my body
reflections of quiet things.

My shadow moves like a huge
violet-colored mosquito.

A hundred crickets are trying
to gild the glow of the reeds.

A glow arises in my breast,
the one mirrored in the water.

Poem source did not offer any name of translator.

Declaring Read Poem

Find them a conscience declared in
an absolute casual
sun, find them a feat
declared by the happy
things
Absolute windows, absolute little lives
Always tell a wall, letter throne
stone desk-life, as it may
That which through
a cautious power dwells, accidental and passing

Ditty of First Desire Read Poem

In the green morning
I wanted to be a heart.

a heart.

And in the ripe evening
I wanted to be a nightingale.

A nightingale.

(Soul,
turn oranged colored.

Soul, turn the color of love.

)
In the vivid morning
I wanted to be myself.

A heart.

And at the evenings end
I wanted to be my voice
A nightingale.

Soul,
turn orange colored.

Soul,
turn the color of love.

El Balcón Read Poem

The balcony
If I die
leave the balcony open
The boy eats oranges
(From my balcony I see it)
The reaper mowing wheat
(I'm sorry from my balcony)
If I die
leave the balcony open
Si muero
Dejad el balcón abierto
El niño come naranjas
(Desde mi balcón lo veo)
El segador siega el trigo
(Desde mi balcón lo siento)
Si muero
Dejad el balcón abierto

Farewell Read Poem

If I die,
leave the balcony open.

The little boy is eating oranges.

(From my balcony I can see him.

)
The reaper is harvesting the wheat.

(From my balcony I can hear him.

)
If I die,
leave the balcony open!

Gacela De La Raíz Amarga (& interpretation) Read Poem

Bitter Root Gazelle (& interpretation)
There is a bitter root uba
and a world of a thousand terraces.

Not even the smallest hand
break the water gate.

Where are you going?

where to?

where?

There is a sky of a thousand windows
~livid bee battle~
and there is a bitter root.

bitter.

It hurts in the sole of the foot,
the inside of the face
and it hurts in the fresh trunk
freshly cut night
Love! my enemy
bite your bitter root!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Ghazal of the Bitter Root
There is a bitter root
and a world of a thousand tiers.

A wall of water refusing to stand
still for even the smallest hand.

Where are you going?

To where?

Where?

There is a heaven with a thousand windows
~at odds with angry bees~
and there is a bitter root.

Scathing.

It pierces the sole of the foot,
reaches out from behind the eyes
and can make the young in body fold
as fully as night devours the skies.

Sees it! My enemy~
it bites, your bitter root!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Hay uba raíz amarga
y un mundo de mil terrazas.

Ni la mano más pequeña
quiebra la puerta del agua.

¿Dónde vas?

¿adónde?

¿dónde?

Hay un cielo de mil ventanas
~ batalla de abejas lívidas ~
y hay una raíz amarga.

Amarga.

Duele en la planta del pie,
el interior de la cara
y duele en el tronco fresco
de noche recién cortada.

¡Amor! Enemigo mío
¡muerde tu raíz amarga!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Ghazal of the Bitter Root
There is a bitter root
and a world of a thousand tiers.

A wall of water refusing to stand
still for even the smallest hand.

Where are you going?

To where?

Where?

There is a heaven with a thousand windows
~ at odds with angry bees ~
and there is a bitter root.

Scathing.

It pierces the sole of the foot,
reaches out from behind the eyes
and can make the young in body fold
as fully as night devours the skies.

Love! My enemy ~
it bites, your bitter root!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
(the above Spanish poem can be found in "The Tamarit Poems", The Dedalus Press, 2002,
& is presented here for educational, i.

e.

non commercial, purposes only.

The English interpretation is by Jackie Joseph © 2011) ~ ~ ~

Gacela Of The Dark Death Read Poem

I want to sleep the sleep of the apples,
I want to get far away from the busyness of the cemeteries.

I want to sleep the sleep of that child
who longed to cut his heart open far out at sea.

I don't want them to tell me again how the corpse keeps all its blood,
how the decaying mouth goes on begging for water.

I'd rather not hear about the torture sessions the grass arranges for
nor about how the moon does all its work before dawn
with its snakelike nose.

I want to sleep for half a second,
a second, a minute, a century,
but I want everyone to know that I am still alive,
that I have a golden manger inside my lips,
that I am the little friend of the west wind,
that I am the elephantine shadow of my own tears.

When it's dawn just throw some sort of cloth over me
because I know dawn will toss fistfuls of ants at me,
and pour a little hard water over my shoes
so that the scorpion claws of the dawn will slip off.

Because I want to sleep the sleep of the apples,
and learn a mournful song that will clean all earth away from me,
because I want to live with that shadowy child
who longed to cut his heart open far out at sea.

Translated by Robert Bly

Gacela of the Dead Child Read Poem

Each afternoon in Granada,
each afternoon, a child dies.

Each afternoon the water sits down
and chats with its companions.

The dead wear mossy wings.

The cloudy wind and the clear wind
are two pheasants in flight through the towers,
and the day is a wounded boy.

Not a flicker of lark was left in the air
when I met you in the caverns of wine.

Not the crumb of a cloud was left in the ground
when you were drowned in the river.

A giant of water fell down over the hills,
and the valley was tumbling with lilies and dogs.

In my hands' violet shadow, your body,
dead on the bank, was an angel of coldness.

Gacela of Unforseen Love Read Poem

No one understood the perfume
of the dark magnolia of your womb.

Nobody knew that you tormented
a hummingbird of love between your teeth.

A thousand Persian little horses fell asleep
in the plaza with moon of your forehead,
while through four nights I embraced
your waist, enemy of the snow.

Between plaster and jasmins, your glance
was a pale branch of seeds.

I sought in my heart to give you
the ivory letters that say "siempre",
"siempre", "siempre" : garden of my agony,
your body elusive always,
that blood of your veins in my mouth,
your mouth already lightless for my death.

If My Hands Could Defoliate translated from Si Mis Manos Pudieran Deshojar Read Poem

I pronounce your name
on dark nights,
when the stars come
to drink on the moon
and sleep in tufts
of hidden fronds.

And I feel myself hollow
of passion and music.

Crazy clock that sings
dead ancient hours.

I pronounce your name,
in this dark night,
and your name sounds
more distant than ever.

More distant that all stars
and more doleful than a calm rain.

Will I love you like then
ever again?

What blame
has my heart?

When the mist dissipates,
what other passion may I expect?

Will it be calm and pure?

If only my fingers could
defoliate** the moon!
---------------------------
Si Mis Manos Pudieran Deshojar
Yo pronuncio tu nombre
En las noches oscuras
Cuando vienen los astros
A beber en la luna
Y duermen los ramajes
De las frondas ocultas.

Y yo me siento hueco
De pasión y de música.

Loco reloj que canta
Muertas horas antiguas.

Yo pronuncio tu nombre,
En esta noche oscura,
Y tu nombre me suena
Más lejano que nunca.

Más lejano que todas las estrellas
Y más doliente que la mansa lluvia.

¿Te querré como entonces
Alguna vez?

¿Qué culpa
Tiene mi corazón?

Si la niebla se esfuma
¿Qué otra pasión me espera?

¿Será tranquila y pura?

¡¡Si mis dedos pudieran
Deshojar a la luna!!
Translator’s note:
Defoliate is the only word I could find to translate 'deshojar', which means to take off the petals of a flower (depetaled would be a nice word, but alas isn't a word in the English vocabulary)
**Translator’s note:
Defoliate is the only word I could find to translate 'deshojar', which means to take off the petals of a flower (depetaled would be a nice word, but alas isn't a word in the English vocabulary)

La Casada Infiel Read Poem

The Unfaithful Married
And that I took her to the river
believing that she was a girl,
but she had a husband.

It was the night of Santiago
and almost by compromise.

the lanterns went out
and the crickets were lit.

in the last corners
I touched her sleeping breasts,
and they suddenly opened
like bunches of hyacinths.

.

The starch of her petticoat
it sounded in my ear,
like a piece of silk
torn by ten knives.

Without silver light in their cups
the trees have grown,
and a horizon of dogs
barks far away from the river.

past the blackberries,
the reeds and the thorns,
under his mop of hair
I made a hole in the slime.

I took off my tie.

she took off the dress.

I the revolver belt.

She her four bras.

Neither spikenards nor conches
They have such fine skin
nor the crystals with moon
They shimmer with that brilliance.

Her thighs escaped me
like surprised fish,
half full of fire,
half full of cold.

that night i ran
the best of roads,
mounted on mother-of-pearl filly
without flanges and without stirrups.

I don't mean, by man,
the things she said to me.

the light of understanding
makes me be very restrained.

Dirty with kisses and sand
I took her to the river.

With the air they beat
the swords of the lilies.

I behaved like what I am.

Like a legitimate gypsy.

I gave her a sewing kit
straw satin large,
and I didn't want to fall in love
because having a husband
he told me I was a girl
when he took her to the river.

Y que yo me la llevé al río
creyendo que era mozuela,
pero tenía marido.

Fue la noche de Santiago
y casi por compromiso.

Se apagaron los faroles
y se encendieron los grillos.

En las últimas esquinas
toqué sus pechos dormidos,
y se me abrieron de pronto
como ramos de jacintos.

.

El almidón de su enagua
me sonaba en el oído,
como una pieza de seda
rasgada por diez cuchillos.

Sin luz de plata en sus copas
los árboles han crecido,
y un horizonte de perros
ladra muy lejos del río.

Pasadas la zarzamoras,
los juncos y los espinos,
bajo su mata de pelo
hice un hoyo sobre el limo.

Yo me quité la corbata.

Ella se quitó el vestido.

Yo el cinturón de revólver.

Ella sus cuatro corpiños.

Ni nardos ni caracolas
tienen el cutis tan fino,
ni los critales con luna
relumbran con ese brillo.

Sus muslos se me escapaban
como peces sorprendidos,
la mitad llenos de lumbre,
la mitad llenos de frío.

Aquella noche corrí
el mejor de los caminos,
montado en potra de nácar
sin bridas y sin estribos.

No quiero decir, por hombre,
las cosas que ella me dijo.

La luz del entendimiento
me hace ser muy comedido.

Sucia de besos y arena
yo me la llevé al río.

Con el aire se batían
las espadas de los lirios.

Me porté como quien soy.

Como un gitano legítimo.

La regalé un costurero
grande de raso pajizo,
y no quise enamorarme
porque teniendo marido
me dijo que era mozuela
cuando la llevaba al río.

La Guitarra Read Poem

Guitar
the crying begins
of the guitar
the cups break
am.

the crying begins
of the guitar
It's useless
shut her up
It is impossible
shut her up
monotonous cries
how the water cries
how the wind cries
about the snowfall
It is impossible
shut her up
cry over things
distant.

hot southern sand
who asks for white camellias.

The targetless arrow cries,
the afternoon without tomorrow,
and the first dead bird
on the branch
O guitar!
wounded heart
for five swords.

Spanish Translation
The Guitar
The weeping of the guitar
begins.

The goblets of dawn
are smashed.

The weeping of the guitar
begins.

Useless
to silence it.

impossible
to silence it.

It weeps monotonously
as water weeps
as the wind weeps
over snowfields.

impossible
to silence it.

It weeps for distant
things.

hot southern sands
yearning for white camellias.

Weeps arrow without target
evening without morning
and the first dead bird
on the branch.

O guitar!
Heart mortally wounded
by five swords.

Empieza el llanto
de la guitarra.

Se rompen las copas
de la madrugada.

Empieza el llanto
de la guitarra.

Es inútil
callarla.

Es imposible
callarla.

Llora monótona
como llora el agua,
como llora el viento
sobre la nevada.

Es imposible
callarla.

Llora por cosas
lejanas.

Arena del Sur caliente
que pide camelias blancas.

Llora flecha sin blanco,
la tarde sin mañana,
y el primer pájaro muerto
sobre la rama.

¡Oh guitarra!
Corazón malherido
por cinco espadas.

English Translation
The Guitar
The weeping of the guitar
begins.

The goblets of dawn
are smashed.

The weeping of the guitar
begins.

Useless
to silence it.

Impossible
to silence it.

It weeps monotonously
as water weeps
as the wind weeps
over snowfields.

Impossible
to silence it.

It weeps for distant
things.

Hot southern sands
yearning for white camellias.

Weeps arrow without target
evening without morning
and the first dead bird
on the branch.

Oh, guitar!
Heart mortally wounded
by five swords.

english translation: Cola Franzen, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Lament For Ignacio Sanchez Mejias Read Poem

Cogida and death
At five in the afternoon.

It was exactly five in the afternoon.

A boy brought the white sheet
at five in the afternoon.

A trail of lime ready prepared
at five in the afternoon.

The rest was death, and death alone.

The wind carried away the cottonwool
at five in the afternoon.

And the oxide scattered crystal and nickel
at five in the afternoon.

Now the dove and the leopard wrestle
at five in the afternoon.

And a thigh with a desolated horn
at five in the afternoon.

The bass-string struck up
at five in the afternoon.

Arsenic bells and smoke
at five in the afternoon.

Groups of silence in the corners
at five in the afternoon.

And the bull alone with a high heart!
At five in the afternoon.

When the sweat of snow was coming
at five in the afternoon,
when the bull ring was covered with iodine
at five in the afternoon.

Death laid eggs in the wound
at five in the afternoon.

At five in the afternoon.

At five o'clock in the afternoon.

A coffin on wheels is his bed
at five in the afternoon.

Bones and flutes resound in his ears
at five in the afternoon.

Now the bull was bellowing through his forehead
at five in the afternoon.

The room was iridescent with agony
at five in the afternoon.

In the distance the gangrene now comes
at five in the afternoon.

Horn of the lily through green groins
at five in the afternoon.

The wounds were burning like suns
at five in the afternoon.

At five in the afternoon.

Ah, that fatal five in the afternoon!
It was five by all the clocks!
It was five in the shade of the afternoon!
2.

The Spilled Blood
I will not see it!
Tell the moon to come,
for I do not want to see the blood
of Ignacio on the sand.

I will not see it!
The moon wide open.

Horse of still clouds,
and the grey bull ring of dreams
with willows in the barreras.

I will not see it!
Let my memory kindle!
Warm the jasmines
of such minute whiteness!
I will not see it!
The cow of the ancient world
passed her sad tongue
over a snout of blood
spilled on the sand,
and the bulls of Guisando,
partly death and partly stone,
bellowed like two centuries
sated with threading the earth.

No.

I will not see it!
Ignacio goes up the tiers
with all his death on his shoulders.

He sought for the dawn
but the dawn was no more.

He seeks for his confident profile
and the dream bewilders him
He sought for his beautiful body
and encountered his opened blood
Do not ask me to see it!
I do not want to hear it spurt
each time with less strength:
the spurt that illuminates
the tiers of seats, and spills
over the corduroy and the leather
of a thirsty multitude.

Who shouts that I should come near!
Do not ask me to see it!
His eyes did not close
when he saw the horns near,
but the terrible mothers
lifted their heads.

And across the ranches,
an air of secret voices rose,
shouting to celestial bulls,
herdsmen of pale mist.

There was no prince in Sevilla
who could compare to him,
nor sword like his sword
nor heart so true.

Like a river of lions
was his marvellous strength,
and like a marble torso
his firm drawn moderation.

The air of Andalusian Rome
gilded his head
where his smile was a spiked
of wit and intelligence.

What a great torero in the ring!
What a good peasant in the sierra!
How gentle with the sheaves!
How hard with the spurs!
How tender with the dew!
How dazzling the fiesta!
How tremendous with the final
banderillas of darkness!
But now he sleeps without end.

Now the moss and the grass
open with sure fingers
the flower of his skull.

And now his blood comes out singing;
singing along marshes and meadows,
slides on frozen horns,
faltering souls in the mist
stumbling over a thousand hoofs
like a long, dark, sad tongue,
to form a pool of agony
close to the starry Guadalquivir.

Oh, white wall of Spain!
Oh, black bull of sorrow!
Oh, hard blood of Ignacio!
Oh, nightingale of his veins!
No.

I will not see it!
No chalice can contain it,
no swallows can drink it,
no frost of light can cool it,
nor song nor deluge of white Lillie's,
no glass can cover it with silver.

No.

I will not see it!
3.

The Laid Out Body
Stone is a forehead where dreams grieve
without curving waters and frozen cypresses.

Stone is a shoulder on which to bear Time
with trees formed of tears and ribbons and planets.

I have seen grey showers move towards the waves
raising their tender riddle arms,
to avoid being caught by lying stone
which loosens their limbs without soaking their blood.

For stone gathers seed and clouds,
skeleton larks and wolves of penumbra:
but yields not sounds nor crystals nor fire,
only bull rings and bull rings and more bull rings without walls.

Now, Ignacio the well born lies on the stone.

All is finished.

What is happening! Contemplate his face:
death has covered him with pale sulphur
and has place on him the head of dark Minotaur.

All is finished.

The rain penetrates his mouth.

The air, as if mad, leaves his sunken chest,
and Love, soaked through with tears of snow,
warms itself on the peak of the herd.

What are they saying?

A stenching silence settles down.

We are here with a body laid out which fades away,
with a pure shape which had nightingales
and we see it being filled with depth less holes.

Who creases the shroud?

What he says is not true!
Nobody sings here, nobody weeps in the corner,
nobody pricks the spurs, nor terrifies the serpent.

Here I want nothing else but the round eyes
to see his body without a chance of rest.

Here I want to see those men of hard voice.

Those that break horses and dominate rivers;
those men of sonorous skeleton who sing
with a mouth full of sun and flint.

Here I want to see them.

Before the stone.

Before this body with broken reins.

I want to know from them the way out
for this captain stripped down by death.

I want them to show me a lament like a river
which will have sweet mists and deep shores,
to take the body of Ignacio where it looses itself
without hearing the double planting of the bulls.

Loses itself in the round bull ring of the moon
which feigns in its youth a sad quiet bull,
loses itself in the night without song of fishes
and in the white thicket of frozen smoke.

I don't want to cover his face with handkerchiefs
that he may get used to the death he carries.

Go, Ignacio, feel not the hot bellowing
Sleep, fly, rest, even the sea dies!
4.

Absence of the Soul IV
The bull does not know you, nor the fig tree,
nor the horses, nor the ants in your own house.

The child and the afternoon do not know you
because you have dead forever.

The shoulder of the stone does not know you
nor the black silk, where you are shuttered.

Your silent memory does not know you
because you have died forever
The autumn will come with small white snails,
misty grapes and clustered hills,
but no one will look into your eyes
because you have died forever.

Because you have died for ever,
like all the dead of the earth,
like all the dead who are forgotten
in a heap of lifeless dogs.

Nobody knows you.

No.

But I sing of you.

For posterity I sing of your profile and grace.

Of the signal maturity of your understanding.

Of your appetite for death and the taste of its mouth.

Of the sadness of your once valiant gaiety.

It will be a long time, if ever, before there is born
an Andalusian so true, so rich in adventure.

I sing of his elegance with words that groan,
and I remember a sad breeze through the olive trees.

Ignacio Sánchez Mejías was a Spanish bullfighter, one of the greatest in history.

When he died after a goring (cornada) in the Plaza of Manzanares, he was memorialized by many famous poets but this is probably the best.

"Llanto por la muerte de Ignacio Sánchez Mejías" ("Weeping for the Death of Ignacio Sánchez Mejías").

For many people this is the best Spanish elegy since the Coplas of Jorge Manrigue.

Landscape of a Vomiting Multitude Read Poem

The fat lady came out first,
tearing out roots and moistening drumskins.

The fat lady
who turns dying octopuses inside out.

The fat lady, the moon's antagonist,
was running through the streets and deserted buildings
and leaving tiny skulls of pigeons in the corners
and stirring up the furies of the last centuries' feasts
and summoning the demon of bread through the sky's clean-swept hills
and filtering a longing for light into subterranean tunnels.

The graveyards, yes the graveyards
and the sorrow of the kitchens buried in sand,
the dead, pheasants and apples of another era,
pushing it into our throat.

There were murmuring from the jungle of vomit
with the empty women, with hot wax children,
with fermented trees and tireless waiters
who serve platters of salt beneath harps of saliva.

There's no other way, my son, vomit! There's no other way.

It's not the vomit of hussars on the breasts of their whores,
nor the vomit of cats that inadvertently swallowed frogs,
but the dead who scratch with clay hands
on flint gates where clouds and desserts decay.

The fat lady came first
with the crowds from the ships, taverns, and parks.

Vomit was delicately shaking its drums
among a few little girls of blood
who were begging the moon for protection.

Who could imagine my sadness?

The look on my face was mine, but now isn't me,
the naked look on my face, trembling for alcohol
and launching incredible ships
through the anemones of the piers.

I protect myself with this look
that flows from waves where no dawn would go,
I, poet without arms, lost
in the vomiting multitude,
with no effusive horse to shear
the thick moss from my temples.

The fat lady went first
and the crowds kept looking for pharmacies
where the bitter tropics could be found.

Only when a flag went up and the first dogs arrived
did the entire city rush to the railings of the boardwalk.

Las Seis Cuerdas Read Poem

the six strings
Guitar,
makes dreams cry
the sob of souls
losses,
leaks out of his mouth
round.

And like the tarantula
weave a big star
to catch sighs,
that float in your black
wooden cistern.

La guitarra,
hace llorar a los sueños.

El sollozo de las almas
perdidas,
se escapa por su boca
redonda.

Y como la tarántula
teje una gran estrella
para cazar suspiros,
que flotan en su negro
aljibe de madera.

Little Viennese Waltz Read Poem

In Vienna there are ten little girls,
a shoulder for death to cry on,
and a forest of dried pigeons.

There is a fragment of tomorrow
in the museum of winter frost.

There is a thousand-windowed dance hall.

Ay, ay, ay, ay!
Take this close-mouthed waltz.

Little waltz, little waltz, little waltz,
of itself of death, and of brandy
that dips its tail in the sea.

I love you, I love you, I love you,
with the armchair and the book of death,
down the melancholy hallway,
in the iris's darkened garret,
Ay, ay, ay, ay!
Take this broken-waisted waltz.

In Vienna there are four mirrors
in which your mouth and the ehcoes play.

There is a death for piano
that paints little boys blue.

There are beggars on the roof.

There are fresh garlands of tears.

Ay, ay, ay, ay!
Take this waltz that dies in my arms.

Because I love you, I love you, my love,
in the attic where the children play,
dreaming ancient lights of Hungary
through the noise, the balmy afternoon,
seeing sheep and irises of snow
through the dark silence of your forehead
Ay, ay, ay, ay!
Take this " I will always love you" waltz
In Vienna I will dance with you
in a costume with
a river's head.

See how the hyacinths line my banks!
I will leave my mouth between your legs,
my soul in a photographs and lilies,
and in the dark wake of your footsteps,
my love, my love, I will have to leave
violin and grave, the waltzing ribbons.

Muerte De Antoñito El Camborio Read Poem

Death of Antonito El Camborio
voices of death sounded
near the Guadalquivir.

ancient voices that surround
manly carnation voice.

He nailed them over the boots
boar bites.

In the fight he jumped
dolphin soaps
bath with enemy blood
his crimson tie,
but they were four daggers
and had to succumb.

when the stars strike
grates to gray water,
when the erales dream
wallflower Veronicas,
voices of death sounded
near the Guadalquivir.

Antonio Torres Heredia
Camborio of hard mane,
moon green tan,
manly carnation voice:
who has taken your life
near the Guadalquivir?

My four Heredia cousins
sons of Benameji
What in others they did not envy,
they already envied it in me.

Corinthian shoes,
ivory medallions,
and this kneaded complexion
with olive and jasmine.

Oh Antoñito el Camborio,
worthy of an Empress!
Remember the Virgin
because you are going to die.

Oh Federico Garcia!
call the Civil Guard!
My size has already broken
like corn stalk.

Three blows of blood had
and died in profile.

Long live currency than ever
it will repeat itself.

A lively angel puts
his head on a cushion.

Others with a tired blush,
they lit a lamp.

And when the four cousins
they arrive at Benamejí,
voices of death ceased
near the Guadalquivir.

Voces de muerte sonaron
cerca del Guadalquivir.

Voces antiguas que cercan
voz de clavel varonil.

Les clavó sobre las botas
mordiscos de jabalí.

En la lucha daba saltos
jabonados de delfín.

Baño con sangre enemiga
su corbata carmesí,
pero eran cuatro puñales
y tuvo que sucumbir.

Cuando las estrellas clavan
rejones al agua gris,
cuando los erales sueñan
verónicas de alhelí,
voces de muerte sonaron
cerca del Guadalquivir.

Antonio Torres Heredia,
Camborio de dura crin,
moreno de verde luna,
voz de clavel varonil:
¿quién te ha quitado la vida
cerca del Guadalquivir?

Mis cuatro primos Heredias
hijos de Benamejí.

Lo que en otros no envidiaban,
ya lo envidiaban en mí.

Zapatos color corinto,
medallones de marfil,
y este cutis amasado
con aceituna y jazmín.

¡Ay Antoñito el Camborio,
digno de una Emperatriz!
Acuérate de la Virgen
porque te vas a morir.

¡Ay Federico García,
llama a la Guardia Civil!
Ya mi talle se ha quebrado
como caña de maíz.

Tres golpes de sangre tuvo
y se murió de perfil.

Viva moneda que nunca
se volverá a repetir.

Un ángel marchoso pone
su cabeza en un cojín.

Otros de rubor cansado,
encendieron un candil.

Y cuando los cuatro primos
llegan a Benamejí,
voces de muerte cesaron
cerca del Guadalquivir.

Murió Al Amanecer Read Poem

died at dawn
four moon night
and a single tree
with a single shadow
and a single bird.

I search in my flesh
traces of your lips
The spring kisses the wind
without touching it.

I carry the No that you gave me,
in the palm of the hand,
like a wax lemon
almost white.

four moon night
and a single tree
At the tip of a needle,
my love is spinning!
Noche de cuatro lunas
y un solo árbol,
con una sola sombra
y un solo pájaro.

Busco en mi carne las
huellas de tus labios.

El manantial besa al viento
sin tocarlo.

Llevo el No que me diste,
en la palma de la mano,
como un limón de cera
casi blanco.

Noche de cuatro lunas
y un solo árbol,
En la punta de una aguja,
está mi amor ¡girando!

Nocturnos De La Ventana Read Poem

Window Nocturnes
1
High goes the moon.

The wind blows low.

(My long glances,
scan the sky.

)
moon over water,
Moon under the wind.

(My short glances,
explore the ground.

)
The voices of two girls
they were coming without the effort,
of the water moon,
I went to heaven.

two
an arm of the night
enter through my window.

A big brown arm
with water bracelets.

On a blue glass
my soul played in the river
the wounded moments
by the clock… they passed by.

3
I stick my head
through my window, and I see
how do you want to cut it
the blade of the wind
in this guillotine
invisible, I have put
heads without eyes
of all my wishes.

And a scent of lemon
filled the immense instant,
as he turned
in gauze flower the wind.

4
The pond has died
Today a water girl.

It's out of the pond
shrouded on the ground.

From her head to her thighs
a fish crosses her, calling to her.

The wind says "girl"
but he can't wake her up.

The pond has loose
his hair of algae
and in the air her gray boobs
shuddering with frogs.

God saves you.

we will pray
to Our Lady of Water
by the girl in the pond
dead under the apples
I will then put by your side
two small pumpkins
so that it stays afloat,
Oh! over the salty sea.

1
Alta va la luna.

Bajo corre el viento.

(Mis largas miradas,
exploran el cielo.

)
Luna sobre el agua,
Luna bajo el viento.

(Mis cortas miradas,
exploran el suelo.

)
Las voces de dos niñas
venían.

Sin el esfuerzo,
de la luna del agua,
me fuí a la del cielo.

2
Un brazo de la noche
entra por mi ventana.

Un gran brazo moreno
con pulseras de agua.

Sobre un cristal azul
jugaba al río mi alma.

Los instantes heridos
por el reloj… pasaban.

3
Asomo la cabeza
por mi ventana, y veo
cómo quiere cortarla
la cuchilla del viento.

En esta guillotina
invisible, yo he puesto
las cabezas sin ojos
de todos mis deseos.

Y un olor de limón
llenó el instante inmenso,
mientras se convertía
en flor de gasa el viento.

4
Al estanque se le ha muerto
hoy una niña de agua.

Está fuera del estanque,
sobre el suelo amortajada.

De la cabeza a sus muslos
un pez la cruza, llamándola.

El viento le dice “niña”
mas no puede despertarla.

El estanque tiene suelta
su cabellera de algas
y al aire sus grises tetas
estremecidas de ranas.

Dios te salve.

Rezaremos
a Nuestra Señora de Agua
por la niña del estanque
muerta bajo las manzanas.

Yo luego pondré a su lado
dos pequeñas calabazas
para que se tenga a flote,
¡ay! sobre la mar salada.

Ode to Salvador Dali Read Poem

A rose in the high garden you desire.

A wheel in the pure syntax of steel.

The mountain stripped bare of Impressionist fog,
The grays watching over the last balustrades.

The modern painters in their white ateliers
clip the square root's sterilized flower.

In the waters of the Seine a marble iceberg
chills the windows and scatters the ivy.

Man treads firmly on the cobbled streets.

Crystals hide from the magic of reflections.

The Government has closed the perfume stores.

The machine perpetuates its binary beat.

An absence of forests and screens and brows
roams across the roofs of the old houses.

The air polishes its prism on the sea
and the horizon rises like a great aqueduct.

Soldiers who know no wine and no penumbra
behead the sirens on the seas of lead.

Night, black statue of prudence, holds
the moon's round mirror in her hand.

A desire for forms and limits overwhelms us.

Here comes the man who sees with a yellow ruler.

Venus is a white still life
and the butterfly collectors run away.

*
Cadaqués, at the fulcrum of water and hill,
lifts flights of stairs and hides seashells.

Wooden flutes pacify the air.

An ancient woodland god gives the children fruit.

Her fishermen sleep dreamless on the sand.

On the high sea a rose is their compass.

The horizon, virgin of wounded handkerchiefs,
links the great crystals of fish and moon.

A hard diadem of white brigantines
encircles bitter foreheads and hair of sand.

The sirens convince, but they don't beguile,
and they come if we show a glass of fresh water.

*
Oh Salvador Dali, of the olive-colored voice!
I do not praise your halting adolescent brush
or your pigments that flirt with the pigment of your times,
but I laud your longing for eternity with limits.

Sanitary soul, you live upon new marble.

You run from the dark jungle of improbable forms.

Your fancy reaches only as far as your hands,
and you enjoy the sonnet of the sea in your window.

The world is dull penumbra and disorder
in the foreground where man is found.

But now the stars, concealing landscapes,
reveal the perfect schema of their courses.

The current of time pools and gains order
in the numbered forms of century after century.

And conquered Death takes refuge trembling
in the tight circle of the present instant.

When you take up your palette, a bullet hole in its wing,
you call on the light that brings the olive tree to life.

The broad light of Minerva, builder of scaffolds,
where there is no room for dream or its hazy flower.

You call on the old light that stays on the brow,
not descending to the mouth or the heart of man.

A light feared by the loving vines of Bacchus
and the chaotic force of curving water.

You do well when you post warning flags
along the dark limit that shines in the night.

As a painter, you refuse to have your forms softened
by the shifting cotton of an unexpected cloud.

The fish in the fishbowl and the bird in the cage.

You refuse to invent them in the sea or the air.

You stylize or copy once you have seen
their small, agile bodies with your honest eyes.

You love a matter definite and exact,
where the toadstool cannot pitch its camp.

You love the architecture that builds on the absent
and admit the flag simply as a joke.

The steel compass tells its short, elastic verse.

Unknown clouds rise to deny the sphere exists.

The straight line tells of its upward struggle
and the learned crystals sing their geometries.

*
But also the rose of the garden where you live.

Always the rose, always, our north and south!
Calm and ingathered like an eyeless statue,
not knowing the buried struggle it provokes.

Pure rose, clean of artifice and rough sketches,
opening for us the slender wings of the smile.

(Pinned butterfly that ponders its flight.

)
Rose of balance, with no self-inflicted pains.

Always the rose!
*
Oh Salvador Dali, of the olive-colored voice!
I speak of what your person and your paintings tell me.

I do not praise your halting adolescent brush,
but I sing the steady aim of your arrows.

I sing your fair struggle of Catalan lights,
your love of what might be made clear.

I sing your astronomical and tender heart,
a never-wounded deck of French cards.

I sing your restless longing for the statue,
your fear of the feelings that await you in the street.

I sing the small sea siren who sings to you,
riding her bicycle of corals and conches.

But above all I sing a common thought
that joins us in the dark and golden hours.

The light that blinds our eyes is not art.

Rather it is love, friendship, crossed swords.

Not the picture you patiently trace,
but the breast of Theresa, she of sleepless skin,
the tight-wound curls of Mathilde the ungrateful,
our friendship, painted bright as a game board.

May fingerprints of blood on gold
streak the heart of eternal Catalunya.

May stars like falconless fists shine on you,
while your painting and your life break into flower.

Don't watch the water clock with its membraned wings
or the hard scythe of the allegory.

Always in the air, dress and undress your brush
before the sea peopled with sailors and ships.

Ode to Walt Whitman Read Poem

By the East River and the Bronx
boys were singing, exposing their waists
with the wheel, with oil, leather, and the hammer.

Ninety thousand miners taking silver from the rocks
and children drawing stairs and perspectives.

But none of them could sleep,
none of them wanted to be the river,
none of them loved the huge leaves
or the shoreline's blue tongue.

By the East River and the Queensboro
boys were battling with industry
and the Jews sold to the river faun
the rose of circumcision,
and over bridges and rooftops, the mouth of the sky emptied
herds of bison driven by the wind.

But none of them paused,
none of them wanted to be a cloud,
none of them looked for ferns
or the yellow wheel of a tambourine.

As soon as the moon rises
the pulleys will spin to alter the sky;
a border of needles will besiege memory
and the coffins will bear away those who don't work.

New York, mire,
New York, mire and death.

What angel is hidden in your cheek?

Whose perfect voice will sing the truths of wheat?

Who, the terrible dream of your stained anemones?

Not for a moment, Walt Whitman, lovely old man,
have I failed to see your beard full of butterflies,
nor your corduroy shoulders frayed by the moon,
nor your thighs pure as Apollo's,
nor your voice like a column of ash,
old man, beautiful as the mist,
you moaned like a bird
with its sex pierced by a needle.

Enemy of the satyr,
enemy of the vine,
and lover of bodies beneath rough cloth.

.

.

Not for a moment, virile beauty,
who among mountains of coal, billboards, and railroads,
dreamed of becoming a river and sleeping like a river
with that comrade who would place in your breast
the small ache of an ignorant leopard.

Not for a moment, Adam of blood, Macho,
man alone at sea, Walt Whitman, lovely old man,
because on penthouse roofs,
gathered at bars,
emerging in bunches from the sewers,
trembling between the legs of chauffeurs,
or spinning on dance floors wet with absinthe,
the faggots, Walt Whitman, point you out.

He's one, too! That's right! And they land
on your luminous chaste beard,
blonds from the north, blacks from the sands,
crowds of howls and gestures,
like cats or like snakes,
the faggots, Walt Whitman, the faggots,
clouded with tears, flesh for the whip,
the boot, or the teeth of the lion tamers.

He's one, too! That's right! Stained fingers
point to the shore of your dream
when a friend eats your apple
with a slight taste of gasoline
and the sun sings in the navels
of boys who play under bridges.

But you didn't look for scratched eyes,
nor the darkest swamp where someone submerges children,
nor frozen saliva,
nor the curves slit open like a toad's belly
that the faggots wear in cars and on terraces
while the moon lashes them on the street corners of terror.

You looked for a naked body like a river.

Bull and dream who would join wheel with seaweed,
father of your agony, camellia of your death,
who would groan in the blaze of your hidden equator.

Because it's all right if a man doesn't look for his delight
in tomorrow morning's jungle of blood.

The sky has shores where life is avoided
and there are bodies that shouldn't repeat themselves in the dawn.

Agony, agony, dream, ferment, and dream.

This is the world, my friend, agony, agony.

Bodies decompose beneath the city clocks,
war passes by in tears, followed by a million gray rats,
the rich give their mistresses
small illuminated dying things,
and life is neither noble, nor good, nor sacred.

Man is able, if he wishes, to guide his desire
through a vein of coral or a heavenly naked body.

Tomorrow, loves will become stones, and Time
a breeze that drowses in the branches.

That's why I don't raise my voice, old Walt Whitman,
against the little boy who writes
the name of a girl on his pillow,
nor against the boy who dresses as a bride
in the darkness of the wardrobe,
nor against the solitary men in casinos
who drink prostitution's water with revulsion,
nor against the men with that green look in their eyes
who love other men and burn their lips in silence.

But yes against you, urban faggots,
tumescent flesh and unclean thoughts.

Mothers of mud.

Harpies.

Sleepless enemies
of the love that bestows crowns of joy.

Always against you, who give boys
drops of foul death with bitter poison.

Always against you,
Fairies of North America,
Pájaros of Havana,
Jotos of Mexico,
Sarasas of Cádiz,
Apios of Seville,
Cancos of Madrid,
Floras of Alicante,
Adelaidas of Portugal.

Faggots of the world, murderers of doves!
Slaves of women.

Their bedroom bitches.

Opening in public squares like feverish fans
or ambushed in rigid hemlock landscapes.

No quarter given! Death
spills from your eyes
and gathers gray flowers at the mire's edge.

No quarter given! Attention!
Let the confused, the pure,
the classical, the celebrated, the supplicants
close the doors of the bacchanal to you.

And you, lovely Walt Whitman, stay asleep on the Hudson's banks
with your beard toward the pole, openhanded.

Soft clay or snow, your tongue calls for
comrades to keep watch over your unbodied gazelle.

Sleep on, nothing remains.

Dancing walls stir the prairies
and America drowns itself in machinery and lament.

I want the powerful air from the deepest night
to blow away flowers and inscriptions from the arch where you sleep,
and a black child to inform the gold-craving whites
that the kingdom of grain has arrived.

Paisaje Read Poem

Landscape
Field
of olive trees
opens and closes
like a fan
about the olive grove
there is a sunken sky
and a dark rain
of cold lights
Reed trembles and gloom
By the river.

The gray air ripples.

the olive trees,
they are loaded
of screams.

a flock
of captive birds,
that move their very long
tails in the dark.

El campo
de olivos
se abre y se cierra
como un abanico.

Sobre el olivar
hay un cielo hundido
y una lluvia oscura
de luceros fríos.

Tiembla junco y penumbra
a la orilla del río.

Se riza el aire gris.

Los olivos,
están cargados
de gritos.

Una bandada
de pájaros cautivos,
que mueven sus larguísimas
colas en lo sombrío.

Peaceful Waters:Variation Read Poem

peaceful waters of the air
under echo's branches
peaceful waters of a pool
under a bough laden with stars
peaceful waters of your mouth
under a forest of kisses

Piccolo Valzer Viennese Read Poem

Little Viennese Waltz
In Vienna there are ten girls,
a shoulder where death mourns
and a forest of dried doves.

There is a fragment of the morning
in the frost museum.

There is a hall with a thousand stained glass windows.

Ouch! Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!
Take this waltz with your mouth closed.

This waltz, this waltz, this waltz,
yes, death and cognac
wetting its tail in the sea.

I love you, I love you, I love you
with the armchair and the dead book,
in the sad corridor,
in the dark attic of the lily,
in our bed of the moon,
in the dance that dreams the turtle.

Ouch! Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!
Take this waltz from the broken belt.

In Vienna there are four mirrors,
your mouth and the echoes play in it.

There is a death for piano
that dyes young men blue.

There are beggars on the terraces.

AND
fresh weeping wreaths.

Ouch! Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!
Take this waltz that blows in my arms.

Because I love you, I love you, my love,
in the attic where the children play,
dreaming old lights of Hungary
in the murmur of a mild evening,
seeing lambs and snow lilies
in the dark silence of your temples.

Ouch! Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!
Take this "I love you forever" waltz.

In Vienna I will dance with you
with a costume that has the head of a river.

Look at these banks of hyacinths!
I'll leave my mouth between your legs,
my soul in photos and cornflowers,
and in the dark waves of your step I want,
my love, my love, leave,
violin and sepulchre, the ribbons of the waltz.

English Translation
Little Viennese Waltz
In Vienna there are ten little girls
a shoulder for death to cry on
and a forest of dried pigeons.

There is a fragment of tomorrow
in the museum of winter frost.

There is a thousand-windowed dance hall.

Ay, ay, ay, ay!
Take this close-mouthed waltz.

Little waltz, little waltz, little waltz,
of itself, of death, and of brandy
that dips its tail in the sea.

I love you, I love you, I love you,
with the armchair and the book of death
down the melancholy hallway,
in the iris's dark garret,
in our bed that was once the moon's bed,
and in that dance the turtle dreamed of.

Ay, ay, ay, ay!
Take this broken-waisted waltz
In Vienna there are four mirrors
in which your mouth and the echoes play.

There is a death for piano
that paints the little boys blue.

There are beggars on the roof.

There are fresh garlands of tears.

Ay, ay, ay, ay!
Take this waltz that dies in my arms.

Because I love you, I love you, my love,
in the attic where children play,
dreaming ancient lights of Hungary
through the noise, the balmy afternoon,
seeing sheep and irises of snow
through the dark silence of your forehead.

Ay, ay, ay ay!
Take this "I will always love you" waltz.

In Vienna I will dance with you
in a costume with a river's head.

See how the hyacinths line my banks!
I will leave my mouth between your legs,
my soul in photographs and lilies,
and in the dark wake of your footsteps,
my love, my love, I will have to leave
violin and grave, the waltzing ribbons.

A Vienna ci sono dieci ragazze,
una spalla dove piange la morte
e un bosco di colombe disseccate.

C'e' un frammento del mattino
nel museo della brina.

C'è un salone con mille vetrate.

Ahi! Ahi! Ahi! Ahi!
Prendi questo valzer con la bocca chiusa.

Questo valzer, questo valzer, questo valzer,
di sì, di morte e di cognac
che si bagna la coda nel mare.

Io ti amo, io ti amo, io ti amo
con la poltrona e con il libro morto,
nel malinconico corridoio,
nell'oscura soffitta del giglio,
nel nostro letto della luna,
nella danza che sogna la tartaruga.

Ahi! Ahi! Ahi! Ahi!
Prendi questo valzer dalla spezzata cintura.

A Vienna ci sono quattro specchi,
vi giocano la tua bocca e gli echi.

C'è una morte per pianoforte
che tinge d'azzurro i giovanotti.

Ci sono mendichi sui terrazzi.

E
fresche ghirlande di pianto.

Ahi! Ahi! Ahi! Ahi!
Prendi questo valzer che spira fra le mie braccia.

Perchè io ti amo, ti amo, amore mio,
nella soffitta dove giocano i bambini,
sognando vecchie luci d'Ungheria
nel mormorio di una sera mite,
vedendo agnelli e gigli di neve
nell'oscuro silenzio delle tue tempie.

Ahi! Ahi! Ahi! Ahi!
Prendi questo valzer del "Ti amo per sempre".

A Vienna ballerò con te
con un costume che abbia la testa di fiume.

Guarda queste mie rive di giacinti!
Lascerò la mia bocca tra le tue gambe,
la mia anima in foto e fiordalisi,
e nelle onde oscure del tuo passo io voglio,
amore mio, amore mio, lasciare,
violino e sepolcro, i nastri del valzer.

English Translation
Little Viennese Waltz
In Vienna there are ten little girls
a shoulder for death to cry on
and a forest of dried pigeons.

There is a fragment of tomorrow
in the museum of winter frost.

There is a thousand-windowed dance hall.

Ay, ay, ay, ay!
Take this close-mouthed waltz.

Little waltz, little waltz, little waltz,
of itself, of death, and of brandy
that dips its tail in the sea.

I love you, I love you, I love you,
with the armchair and the book of death
down the melancholy hallway,
in the iris's dark garret,
in our bed that was once the moon's bed,
and in that dance the turtle dreamed of.

Ay, ay, ay, ay!
Take this broken-waisted waltz
In Vienna there are four mirrors
in which your mouth and the echoes play.

There is a death for piano
that paints the little boys blue.

There are beggars on the roof.

There are fresh garlands of tears.

Aye, ay, ay, ay!
Take this waltz that dies in my arms.

Because I love you, I love you, my love,
in the attic where children play,
dreaming ancient lights of Hungary
through the noise, the balmy afternoon,
seeing sheep and irises of snow
through the dark silence of your forehead.

Ay, ay, ay ay!
Take this "I will always love you" waltz.

In Vienna I will dance with you
in a costume with a river's head.

See how the hyacinths line my banks!
I will leave my mouth between your legs,
my soul in photographs and lilies,
and in the dark wake of your footsteps,
my love, my love, I will have to leave
violin and grave, the waltzing ribbons.

Preciosa Y El Aire Read Poem

Precious And The Air
Your parchment moon
beautiful playing comes
along an amphibian path
of crystals and laurels.

The starless silence
fleeing the singsong,
falls where the sea beats and sings
its night full of fish.

In the peaks of the mountains
the carabinieri sleep
guarding the white towers
where the English live.

And the gypsies of the water
they get up to be distracted,
conch roundabouts
and green pine branches.

Your parchment moon
Lovely playing comes.

When he saw her he got up
the wind that never sleeps
Saint Christopher naked,
full of heavenly tongues,
look at the girl playing
a sweet absent bagpipe.

Girl, let me lift
your dress to see you.

Open up in my ancient fingers
the blue rose of your belly.

Precious throws the tambourine
and run without stopping.

The wind-shoulder chases her
with a hot sword.

The sea gathers its noise.

The olive trees pale.

The flutes of umbria sing
and the smooth gong of snow.

Precious, run, Precious,
that the green wind catches you!
Precious, run, Precious!
See where it comes from!
Low Star Satyr
with their glistening tongues.

Beautiful, full of fear,
enter the house you have,
above the pines,
the British consul.

Scared by the screams
three carabinieri comes,
their black cloaks tight
and the caps on the temples.

English gives the gypsy
a glass of warm milk,
and a glass of gin
that Precious does not drink.

And while it counts, crying
his adventure to those people,
on the slate tiles
the furious wind bites.

Su luna de pergamino
Preciosa tocando viene
por un anfibio sendero
de cristales y laureles.

El silencio sin estrellas,
huyendo del sonsonete,
cae donde el mar bate y canta
su noche llena de peces.

En los picos de la sierra
los carabineros duermen
guardando las blancas torres
donde viven los ingleses.

Y los gitanos del agua
levantan por distraerse,
glorietas de caracolas
y ramas de pino verde.

Su luna de pergamino
Preciosa tocando viene.

Al verla se ha levantado
el viento que nunca duerme.

San Cristobalón desnudo,
lleno de lenguas celestes,
mira a la niña tocando
una dulce gaita ausente.

Niña, deja que levante
tu vestido para verte.

Abre en mi dedos antiguos
la rosa azul de tu vientre.

Preciosa tira el pandero
y corre sin detenerse.

El viento-hombrón la persigue
con una espada caliente.

Frunce su rumor el mar.

Los olivos palidecen.

Cantan las flautas de umbría
y el liso gong de la nieve.

¡Preciosa, corre, Preciosa,
que te coge el viento verde!
Preciosa, corre, Preciosa!
¡Míralo por donde viene!
Sátiro de estrellas bajas
con sus lenguas relucientes.

Preciosa, llena de miedo,
entra en la casa que tiene,
más arriba de los pinos,
el cónsul de los ingleses.

Asustados por los gritos
tres carabineros viene,
sus negras capas ceñidas
y los gorros en las sienes.

El inglés da a la gitana
un vaso de tibia leche,
y una copa de ginebra
que Preciosa no se bebe.

Y mientras cuenta, llorando
su aventura a aquella gente,
en las tejas de pizarra
el viento, furioso, muerde.

Romance De La Luna, Luna Read Poem

Moon Romance, Moon
The moon came to the forge
with its tuberose bustle.

The boy looks at her.

The boy is looking at her.

in the shaken air
the moon moves its arms
and teaches, lubricious and pure,
her breasts of hard tin.

Run away moon, moon, moon.

If the gypsies came
they would do with your heart
white necklaces and rings.

Boy, let me dance.

When the gypsies come
they will find you on the anvil
with eyes closed.

Run away moon, moon, moon,
I already feel their horses.

Boy, leave me, don't step
my starched white.

the horseman approached
playing the drum of the plain
Inside the forge the child,
his eyes are closed.

Through the olive grove they came,
bronze and dream, the gypsies.

heads up
and narrowed eyes.

How the zumaya sings,
oh how he sings in the tree!
The moon goes through the sky
with a child by the hand.

Inside the forge they cry,
screaming, the gypsies.

The air watches over her, watches over her.

The air is veiling her.

La luna vino a la fragua
con su polisón de nardos.

El niño la mira mira.

El niño la está mirando.

En el aire conmovido
mueve la luna sus brazos
y enseña, lúbrica y pura,
sus senos de duro estaño.

Huye luna, luna, luna.

Si vinieran los gitanos,
harían con tu corazón
collares y anillos blancos.

Niño, déjame que baile.

Cuando vengan los gitanos,
te encontrarán sobre el yunque
con los ojillos cerrados.

Huye luna, luna, luna,
que ya siento sus caballos.

Níno, déjame, no pises
mi blancor almidonado.

El jinete se acercaba
tocando el tambor del llano
Dentro de la fragua el niño,
tiene los ojos cerrados.

Por el olivar venían,
bronce y sueño, los gitanos.

Las cabezas levantadas
y los ojos entornados.

¡Cómo canta la zumaya,
ay cómo canta en el árbol!
Por el cielo va la luna
con un niño de la mano.

Dentro de la fragua lloran,
dando gritos, los gitanos.

El aire la vela, vela.

El aire la está velando.

Romance Sonámbulo Read Poem

English Translation
Green, how I want you green.

Green wind.

Green branches.

The ship out on the sea
and the horse on the mountain.

With the shade around her waist
she dreams on her balcony,
green flesh, her hair green,
with eyes of cold silver.

Green, how I want you green.

Under the gypsy moon,
all things are watching her
and she cannot see them.

Green, how I want you green.

Big hoarfrost stars
come with the fish of shadow
that opens the road of dawn.

The fig tree rubs its wind
with the sandpaper of its branches,
and the forest, cunning cat,
bristles its brittle fibers.

But who will come?

And from where?

She is still on her balcony
green flesh, her hair green,
dreaming in the bitter sea.

—My friend, I want to trade
my horse for her house,
my saddle for her mirror,
my knife for her blanket.

My friend, I come bleeding
from the gates of Cabra.

—If it were possible, my boy,
I'd help you fix that trade.

But now I am not I,
nor is my house now my house.

—My friend, I want to die
decently in my bed.

Of iron, if that's possible,
with blankets of fine chambray.

Don't you see the wound I have
from my chest up to my throat?

—Your white shirt has grown
thirsy dark brown roses.

Your blood oozes and flees a
round the corners of your sash.

But now I am not I,
nor is my house now my house.

—Let me climb up, at least,
up to the high balconies;
Let me climb up! Let me,
up to the green balconies.

Railings of the moon
through which the water rumbles.

Now the two friends climb up,
up to the high balconies.

Leaving a trail of blood.

Leaving a trail of teardrops.

Tin bell vines
were trembling on the roofs.

A thousand crystal tambourines
struck at the dawn light.

Green, how I want you green,
green wind, green branches.

The two friends climbed up.

The stiff wind left
in their mouths, a strange taste
of bile, of mint, and of basil
My friend, where is she—tell me—
where is your bitter girl?

How many times she waited for you!
How many times would she wait for you,
cool face, black hair,
on this green balcony!
Over the mouth of the cistern
the gypsy girl was swinging,
green flesh, her hair green,
with eyes of cold silver.

An icicle of moon
holds her up above the water.

The night became intimate
like a little plaza.

Drunken "Guardias Civiles"
were pounding on the door.

Green, how I want you green.

Green wind.

Green branches.

The ship out on the sea.

And the horse on the mountain.

Translated by William Logan
Original Spanish
Verde que te quiero verde.

Verde viento.

Verdes ramas.

El barco sobre la mar
y el caballo en la montaña.

Con la sombra en la cintura
ella sueña en sus baranda,
verde carne, pelo verde,
con ojos de fría plata.

Verde que te quiero verde.

Bajo la luna gitana,
las cosas la están mirando
y ella no puede mirarlas.

Verde que te quiero verde.

Grandes estrellas de escarcha,
vienen con el pez de sombra
que abre el camino del alba.

La higuera frota su viento
con la lija de sus ramas,
y el monte, gato garduño,
eriza sus pitas agrias.

¿Pero quién vendrá?

¿Y por dónde…?

Ella sigue en su baranda,
verde carne, pelo verde,
soñando en la mar amarga.

Compadre, quiero cambiar
mi caballo por su casa,
mi montura por su espejo,
mi cuchillo por su manta.

Compadre, vengo sangrando,
desde los puertos de Cabra.

Si yo pudiera, mocito,
este trato se cerraba.

Pero yo ya no soy yo,
Ni mi casa es ya mi casa.

Compadre, quiero morir
decentemente en mi cama.

De acero, si puede ser,
con las sábanas de holanda.

¿No ves la herida que tengo
desde el pecho a la garganta?

Trescientas rosas morenas
lleva tu pechera blanca.

Tu sangre rezuma y huele
alrededor de tu faja.

Pero yo ya no soy yo.

Ni mi casa es ya mi casa.

Dejadme subir al menos
hasta las altas barandas,
¡dejadme subir!, dejadme
hasta las verdes barandas.

Barandales de la luna
por donde retumba el agua.

Ya suben los dos compadres
hacia las altas barandas.

Dejando un rastro de sangre.

Dejando un rastro de lágrimas.

Temblaban en los tejados
farolillos de hojalata.

Mil panderos de cristal,
herían la madrugada.

Verde que te quiero verde,
verde viento, verdes ramas.

Los dos compadres subieron.

El largo viento, dejaba
en la boca un raro gusto
de hiel, de menta y de albahaca.

¡Compadre!  ¿Dónde está, dime?

¿Dónde está tu niña amarga?

¡Cuántas veces te esperó!
¡Cuántas veces te esperara,
cara fresca, negro pelo,
en esta verde baranda!
Sobre el rostro del aljibe
se mecía la gitana.

Verde carne, pelo verde,
con ojos de fría plata.

Un carábano de luna
la sostiene sobre el agua.

La noche se puso íntima
como una pequeña plaza.

Guardias civiles borrachos
en la puerta golpeaban.

Saturday Paseo: Adelina Read Poem

Oranges
do not grow in the sea
neither is there love in Sevilla.

You in Dark and the I the sun that's hot,
loan me your parasol.

I'll wear my jealous reflection,
juice of lemon and lime-
and your words,
your sinful little words-
will swim around awhile.

Oranges
do not grow in the sea,
Ay, love!
And there is no love in Sevilla!

Seranata Read Poem

The night soaks itself
along the shore of the river
and in Lolita's breasts
the branches die of love.

The branches die of love.

Naked the night sings
above the bridges of March.

Lolita bathes her body
with salt water and roses.

The branches die of love.

The night of anise and silver
shines over the rooftops.

Silver of streams and mirrors
Anise of your white thighs.

The branches die of love.

(translated from Spanish  by Derek Parker)

Si Mis Manos Pudieran Deshojar -- With English Translation Read Poem

If My Hands Could Desfoliate -- With English Translation
I pronounce your name
in the dark nights
when the stars come
to drink on the moon
And the branches sleep
From the hidden fronds.

and i feel hollow
Of passion and music.

crazy clock that sings
Dead ancient hours.

I pronounce your name
In this dark night
and your name rings a bell
Farther than ever.

Farther than all the stars
And more painful than the gentle rain.

Will I love you like then
Ever?

what fault
Do you have my heart?

If the fog clears
What other passion awaits me?

Will it be calm and pure?

If my fingers could
Defoliate the moon!!
-------------
If my hands could defoliate**
I pronounce your name
on dark nights,
when the stars come
to drink on the moon
and sleep in tufts
of hidden fronds.

And I feel myself hollow
of passion and music.

Crazy clock that sings
dead ancient hours.

I pronounce your name,
in this dark night,
and your name sounds
more distant than ever.

More distant that all stars
and more painful than a calm rain.

Will I love you like then
ever again?

what blame
do you have my heart?

When the mist dissipates,
what other passion may I expect?

Will it be calm and pure?

If only my fingers could
defoliate the moon!
Yo pronuncio tu nombre
En las noches oscuras
Cuando vienen los astros
A beber en la luna
Y duermen los ramajes
De las frondas ocultas.

Y yo me siento hueco
De pasión y de música.

Loco reloj que canta
Muertas horas antiguas.

Yo pronuncio tu nombre,
En esta noche oscura,
Y tu nombre me suena
Más lejano que nunca.

Más lejano que todas las estrellas
Y más doliente que la mansa lluvia.

¿Te querré como entonces
Alguna vez?

¿Qué culpa
Tiene mi corazón?

Si la niebla se esfuma
¿Qué otra pasión me espera?

¿Será tranquila y pura?

¡¡Si mis dedos pudieran
Deshojar a la luna!!
-------------
If my hands could defoliate **
I pronounce your name
on dark nights,
when the stars come
to drink on the moon
and sleep in tufts
of hidden fronds.

And I feel myself hollow
of passion and music.

Crazy clock that sings
dead ancient hours.

I pronounce your name,
in this dark night,
and your name sounds
more distant than ever.

More distant that all stars
and more doleful than a calm rain.

Will I love you like then
ever again?

What blame
has my heart?

When the mist dissipates,
what other passion may I expect?

Will it be calm and pure?

If only my fingers could
defoliate the moon!
**Translator's note:
defoliate is the only word I could find to translate 'deshojar', which means to take off the petals of a flower (depetaled would be a nice word, but alas isn't a word in the English vocabulary)

Soneto Read Poem

Sonnet
Long spectrum of moved silver
the night wind sighing,
opened my old wound with a gray hand
and he walked away: I was looking forward to it.

Wound of love that will give me life
perpetual blood and pure light gushing forth.

Crack in which Philomela is mute
will have forest, pain and soft nest.

Oh what a sweet rumor in my head!
I will lie next to the simple flower
where your beauty floats without soul.

And the wandering water will turn yellow,
while my blood runs in the weeds
wet and smelly from the shore.

Largo espectro de plata conmovida
el viento de la noche suspirando,
abrió con mano gris mi vieja herida
y se alejó: yo estaba deseando.

Llaga de amor que me dará la vida
perpetua sangre y pura luz brotando.

Grieta en que Filomela enmudecida
tendrá bosque, dolor y nido blando.

¡Ay qué dulce rumor en mi cabeza!
Me tenderé junto a la flor sencilla
donde flota sin alma tu belleza.

Y el agua errante se pondrá amarilla,
mientras corre mi sangre en la maleza
mojada y olorosa de la orilla.

Sonnet Read Poem

I know that my profile will be serene
in the north of an unreflecting sky.

Mercury of vigil, chaste mirror
to break the pulse of my style.

For if ivy and the cool of linen
are the norm of the body I leave behind,
my profile in the sand will be the old
unblushing silence of a crocodile.

And though my tongue of frozen doves
will never taste of flame,
only of empty broom,
I'll be a free sign of oppressed norms
on the neck of the stiff branch
and in an ache of dahlias without end.

Sonnet Of The Sweet Complaint Read Poem

Never let me lose the marvel
of your statue-like eyes, or the accent
the solitary rose of your breath
places on my cheek at night.

I am afraid of being, on this shore,
a branchless trunk, and what I most regret
is having no flower, pulp, or clay
for the worm of my despair.

If you are my hidden treasure,
if you are my cross, my dampened pain,
if I am a dog, and you alone my master,
never let me lose what I have gained,
and adorn the branches of your river
with leaves of my estranged Autumn.

Translated by John K.

Walsh and Francisco Aragon

The Faithless Wife Read Poem

So I took her to the river
believing she was a maiden,
but she already had a husband.

It was on St.

James night
and almost as if I was obliged to.

The lanterns went out
and the crickets lighted up.

In the farthest street corners
I touched her sleeping breasts
and they opened to me suddenly
like spikes of hyacinth.

The starch of her petticoat
sounded in my ears
like a piece of silk
rent by ten knives.

Without silver light on their foliage
the  trees had grown larger
and a horizon of dogs
barked very far from the river.

Past the blackberries,
the reeds and the hawthorne
underneath her cluster of hair
I made a hollow in the earth
I took off my tie,
she too off her dress.

I, my belt with the revolver,
She, her four bodices.

Nor nard nor mother-o'-pearl
have skin so fine,
nor does glass with silver
shine with such brilliance.

Her thighs slipped away from me
like startled fish,
half full of fire,
half full of cold.

That night I ran
on the best of roads
mounted on a nacre mare
without bridle stirrups.

As a man, I won't repeat
the things she said to me.

The light of understanding
has made me more discreet.

Smeared with sand and kisses
I took her away from the river.

The swords of the lilies
battled with the air.

I behaved like what I am,
like a proper gypsy.

I gave her a large sewing basket,
of straw-colored satin,
but I did not fall in love
for although she had a husband
she told me she was a maiden
when I took her to the river.

The Guitar Read Poem

The weeping of the guitar
begins.

The goblets of dawn
are smashed.

The weeping of the guitar
begins.

Useless
to silence it.

Impossible
to silence it.

It weeps monotonously
as water weeps
as the wind weeps
over snowfields.

Impossible
to silence it.

It weeps for distant
things.

Hot southern sands
yearning for white camellias.

Weeps arrow without target
evening without morning
and the first dead bird
on the branch.

Oh, guitar!
Heart mortally wounded
by five swords.

The Guitar-La Guitarra Read Poem

The weeping of the guitar
begins.

The goblets of dawn
are smashed.

The weeping of the guitar
begins.

Useless
to silence it.

Impossible
to silence it.

It weeps monotonously
as water weeps
as the wind weeps
over snowfields.

Impossible
to silence it.

It weeps for distant
things.

Hot southern sands
yearning for white camellias.

Weeps arrow without target
evening without morning
and the first dead bird
on the branch.

Oh, guitar!
Heart mortally wounded
by five swords.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Empieza el llanto
de la guitarra.

Se rompen las copas
de la madrugada.

Empieza el llanto
de la guitarra.

Es inútil
callarla.

Es imposible
callarla.

Llora monótona
como llora el agua,
como llora el viento
sobre la nevada.

Es imposible
callarla.

Llora por cosas
lejanas.

Arena del Sur caliente
que pide camelias blancas.

Llora flecha sin blanco,
la tarde sin mañana,
y el primer pájaro muerto
sobre la rama.

¡Oh guitarra!
Corazón malherido
por cinco espadas.

The Gypsy And The Wind Read Poem

Playing her parchment moon
Precosia comes
along a watery path of laurels and crystal lights.

The starless silence, fleeing
from her rhythmic tambourine,
falls where the sea whips and sings,
his night filled with silvery swarms.

High atop the mountain peaks
the sentinels are weeping;
they guard the tall white towers
of the English consulate.

And gypsies of the water
for their pleasure erect
little castles of conch shells
and arbors of greening pine.

Playing her parchment moon
Precosia comes.

The wind sees her and rises,
the wind that never slumbers.

Naked Saint Christopher swells,
watching the girl as he plays
with tongues of celestial bells
on an invisible bagpipe.

Gypsy, let me lift your skirt
and have a look at you.

Open in my ancient fingers
the blue rose of your womb.

Precosia throws the tambourine
and runs away in terror.

But the virile wind pursues her
with his breathing  and burning sword.

The sea darkens and roars,
while the olive trees turn pale.

The flutes of darkness sound,
and a muted gong of the snow.

Precosia, run, Precosia!
Or the green wind will catch you!
Precosia, run, Precosia!
And look how fast he comes!
A satyr of low-born stars
with their long and glistening tongues.

Precosia, filled with fear,
now makes her way to that house
beyond the tall green pines
where the English consul lives.

Alarmed by the anguished cries,
three riflemen come running,
their black capes tightly drawn,
and berets down over their brow.

The Englishman gives the gypsy
a glass of tepid milk
and a shot of Holland gin
which Precosia does not drink.

And while she tells them, weeping,
of her strange adventure,
the wind furiously gnashes
against the slate roof tiles.

The Little Mute Boy Read Poem

The little boy was looking for his voice.

(The King of the crickets had it.

)
In a drop of water
the little boy was looking for his voice.

I do not want it for speaking with;
I will make a ring of it
so that he may wear my silence
on his little finger.

In a drop of water
the little boy was looking for his voice.

(The captive voice, far away.

Put on a cricket' clothes.

)

The Old Lizard Read Poem

In the parched path
I have seen the good lizard
(one dropp of crocodile)
meditating.

With his green frock-coat
of an abbot of the devil,
his correct bearing
and his stiff collar,
he has the sad air
of an old professor.

Those faded eyes
of a broken artist,
how they watch the afternoon
in dismay!
Is this, my friend,
your twilight constitutional?

Please use your cane,
you are very old, Mr.

Lizard,
and the children of the village
may startle you.

What are you seeking in the path,
my near-sighted philosopher,
if the wavering phantasm
of the parched afternoon
has broken the horizon?

Are you seeking the blue alms
of the moribund heaven?

A penny of a star?

Or perhaps
you've been reading a volume
of Lamartine, and you relish
the plateresque trills
of the birds?

(You watch the setting sun,
and your eyes shine,
oh, dragon of the frogs,
with a human radiance.

Ideas, gondolas without oars,
cross the shadowy
waters of your
burnt-out eyes.

)
Have you come looking
for that lovely lady lizard,
green as the wheatfields
of May,
as the long locks
of sleeping pools,
who scorned you, and then
left you in your field?

Oh, sweet idyll, broken
among the sweet sedges!
But, live! What the devil!
I like you.

The motto 'I oppose
the serpent' triumphs
in that grand double chin
of a Christian archbishop.

Now the sun has dissolved
in the cup of the mountains,
and the flocks
cloud the roadway.

It is the hour to depart:
leave the dry path
and your meditations.

You will have time
to look at the stars
when the worms are eating you
at their leisure.

Go home to your house
by the village, of the crickets!
Good night, my friend
Mr.

Lizard!
Now the field is empty,
the mountains dim,
the roadway deserted.

Only, now and again,
a cuckoo sings in the darkness
of the poplar trees.

The Song of the Barren Orange Tree Read Poem

Woodcutter.

Cut my shadow from me.

Free me from the torment
of being without fruit.

Why was I born among mirrors?

Day goes round and round me.

The night copies me
in all its stars.

I want to live without my reflection.

And then let me dream
that ants and thistledown
are my leaves and my parrots.

Train Ride Read Poem

After rain, through afterglow, the unfolding fan
of railway landscape sidled onthe pivot
of a larger arc into the green of evening;
I remembered that noon I saw a gradual bud
still white; though dead in its warm bloom;
always the enemy is the foe at home.

And I wondered what surgery could recover
our lost, long stride of indolence and leisure
which is labor in reverse; what physic recall the smile
not of lips, but of eyes as of the sea bemused.

We, when we disperse from common sleep to several
tasks, we gather to despair; we, who assembled
once for hopes from common toil to dreams
or sickish and hurting or triumphal rapture;
always our enemy is our foe at home.

We, deafened with far scattered city rattles
to the hubbub of forest birds (never having
'had time' to grieve or to hear through vivid sleep
the sea knock on its cracked and hollow stones)
so that the stars, almost, and birds comply,
and the garden-wet; the trees retire; We are
a scared patrol, fearing the guns behind;
always the enemy is the foe at home.

What wonder that we fear our own eyes' look
and fidget to be at home alone, and pitifully
put of age by some change in brushing the hair
and stumble to our ends like smothered runners at their tape;
We follow our shreds of fame into an ambush.

Then (as while the stars herd to the great trough
the blind, in the always-only-outward of their dismantled
archways, awake at the smell of warmed stone
or the sound of reeds, lifting from the dim
into the segment of green dawn) always
our enemy is our foe at home, more
certainly than through spoken words or from grief-
twisted writing on paper, unblotted by tears
the thought came:
There is no physic
for the world's ill, nor surgery; it must
(hot smell of tar on wet salt air)
burn in fever forever, an incense pierced
with arrows, whose name is Love and another name
Rebellion (the twinge, the gulf, split seconds,
the very raindrops, render, and instancy
of Love).

All Poetry to this not-to-be-looked-upon sun
of Passion is the moon's cupped light; all
Politics to this moon, a moon's reflected
cupped light, like the moon of Rome, after
the deep well of Grecian light sank low;
always the enemy is the foe at home.

But these three are friends whose arms twine
without words; as, in still air,
the great grove leans to wind, past and to come.

Weeping Read Poem

Weeping,
I go down the street
Grotesque, without solution
With the sadness of Cyrano
And Quixote.

Redeeming
Infinite impossibilities
With the rhythm of the clock.

Ballad of the Moon Moon Read Poem

Moon came to the forge
in her petticoat of nard
The boy looks and looks
the boy looks at the Moon
In the turbulent air
Moon lifts up her arms
showing — pure and sexy —
her beaten-tin breasts
Run Moon run Moon Moon
If the gypsies came
white rings and white necklaces
they would beat from your heart
Boy will you let me dance —
when the gypsies come
they’ll find you on the anvil
with your little eyes shut
Run Moon run Moon Moon
I hear the horses’ hoofs
Leave me boy! Don’t walk
on my lane of white starch

The horseman came beating
the drum of the plains
The boy at the forge
has his little eyes shut
Through the olive groves
in bronze and in dreams
here the gypsies come
their heads riding high
their eyelids hanging low

How the night heron sings
how it sings in the tree
Moon crosses the sky
with a boy by the hand

At the forge the gypsies
cry and then scream
The wind watches watches
the wind watches the Moon

Translated from the Spanish
Translated from the Spanish

Dreamwalking Ballad Read Poem

Green I want you green
green wind green branches
Boat on the sea and
horse on the mountain
Shadow on her waist
she dreams at her railing
green flesh green hair
eyes of cold silver
Green I want you green
Under the gypsy moon
things are seeing her
but she can’t see them
*
*
Green I want you green
The great stars of frost
come with fish of shadow
paving the path to dawn
The fig tree rasps the wind
with its rough branches
and the wildcat mountain
bares its sour agaves
Who will come—from where—?

At her railing she gazes
green flesh green hair
dream of the bitter sea
*
*
Compadre can I swap
my horse for your house
saddle for your mirror
knife for your blanket
compadre I come bleeding
from the Cabra passes
If I could young friend
the deal would be done
But I'm no longer me
my house isn’t mine
Compadre let me die
decent in my bed
A steel bed if you please
laid with dutch linen
Don’t you see the slash
from my breast to my throat
Three hundred dark roses
on your white shirtfront
Blood oozes and stinks
in the sash at your waist
But I’m no longer me
my house isn't mine
Let me climb way up
to the high terrace
Let me climb let me
to the green terrace
Railing of moonlight
and the rushing water*
*
Two compadres climb
to the high terrace
leaving a trail of blood
and a trail of tears
Tin lanterns trembled
on the tops of roofs
A thousand glass tambourines
tore up the dawn
*
*
Green I want you green
green wind green branches
The two compadres climbed
The slow wind in their mouths
left a strange flavor
of bile basil and mint
Compadre where is she
Where’s your bitter girl
How often has she waited
How often will she wait
fresh face and black hair
on the green terrace*
*
Over the face of the cistern
the gypsy girl swayed
Green flesh green hair
eyes of cold silver
A moon icicle holds her
high over the water
The night was as cozy
as a small plaza
Drunken civil guards
pounded on the door
Green I want you green
Green wind green branches
Boat on the sea and
horse on the mountainTranslated from Spanish
Translated from Spanish

"Love of My Flesh, Living Death" Read Poem

Once I wasn’t always so plain.

I was strewn feathers on a cross
of dune, an expanse of ocean
at my feet, garlands of gulls.

Sirens and gulls.

They couldn’t tame you.

You know as well as they: to be
a dove is to bear the falcon
at your breast, your nights, your seas.

My fear is simple, heart-faced
above a flare of etchings, a lineage
in letters, my sudden stare.

It’s you.

It’s you!sang the heart upon its mantel
pelvis.

Blush of my breath, catch
of my see—beautiful bird—It’s you.

Night Magic (Blue Jester) Read Poem

Night Magic (Blue Jester), 1988, by Carlos Almaraz
Night Magic (Blue Jester), 1988, by Carlos Almaraz
After Federico García Lorca
After Federico García Lorca

Blue that I love you
Blue that I hate you
Fat blue in the face
Disgraced blue that I erase
You lone blue
Blue of an alien race
Strong blue eternally graced
Blue that I know you
Blue that I choose you
Crust blue
Chunky blue
Moon blue glows that despise
You — idolize you
Blue and the band disappears
Blue of the single left dog
Blue of the eminent red fog
Blue that I glue you to me
You again and again blue
Blue blue of the helium
Bubble of  loveloss
Blue of  the whirlwind
The blue being again
Blue of the endless rain
Blue that I paint you
Blue that I knew you
Blue of  the blinking lights
Blue of  the landing at full tilt
Blue of  the wilt
Flower of  nightfall
Blue of  the shadow
In yellowed windows
Blue of the blown
And broken glass
Blue of the Blue Line
Underlines in blue
Blue of the ascending nude
Blue before the blackness
Of  new blue of our winsome
Bedlam Blue of the blue
Bed alone: blue of the one
Who looks on blue of what
Remains of cement fall
Blue of the vague crescent
Ship sailing blue of the rainbow
Of  wait blue that I whore
You — blue that I adore you
Blue of the bluest door
Blue my painted city
In blue (it blew.

)

Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías Read Poem

1

The Goring and the Death

At five in the afternoon
At the stroke of five
The boy brought the white sheet
at five o’clock
A basket of lime all ready
at five o’clock
The rest was death and only death
at five o’clock

Wind carried off the cotton balls
at five o’clock
Rust scattered chrome and glass
at five o’clock
The dove and the leopard fought
at five o’clock
And a thigh with a desolate horn in it
at five o’clock
The bass strings began to thrum
at five o’clock
The bells of arsenic and smoke
at five o’clock

On the corners crowds of silence
at five o’clock
The bull alone with lifted heart
at five o’clock
When the icy sweat began to flow
at five o’clock
when iodine filled the bullring
at five o’clock
and death laid eggs in the wound
at five o’clock
At five o’clock
At the stroke of five

The bed is a coffin on wheels
at five o’clock
Bones and flutes sing in his ear
at five o’clock
The bull roared from his brow
at five o’clock
The room was a death rainbow
at five o’clock
The gangrene began from afar
at five o’clock
Trumpet of a lily in his green groin
at five o’clock
The wounds burned like suns
at five o’clock
and the mob broke the windows
at five o’clock
At five o’clock
Ay what terrible fives
It was five on all the clocks
In the afternoon shadows


2

The Spilled Blood

I don’t want to look

Tell the moon to come
I don’t want to behold
Ignacio’s blood in the ring

I don’t want to look

The moon shines clear
horse of quiet clouds
the gray bullring of dreams
with willows by the gates

I don’t want to look
My memory is burning
Tell the jasmine flowers
so small and so white

I don’t want to look


Cow of the old world
licked its sad tongue
over a snoutful of blood
spilled in the ring
and the bulls of Guisando
half dead and half stone
roared like two centuries
tired of treading the dirt

No
I don't want to look


Ignacio mounts the steps
with his death on his back
He was searching for dawn
but day wasn’t dawning
He searches for his strong face
and gets lost in a dream
He searched for his fine body
and found his spilled blood
Don’t tell me to look
I won’t watch the blood
run slower and slower
the blood that glistens
on the rows and spills
on the leather and corduroy
of the thirsting crowd—
Who shouts at me to look
Don’t tell me to look

His eyes didn’t close
as the horns came near
but the terrible mothers
raised up their heads
And over the herds
the secret voices flew
shouting to the bulls in heaven
herders of pale fog


No prince in Seville
could rival him—
no sword like his sword
no heart so true
Like a river of lions
his prodigious strength
Like a marble torso
his etched poise
A hint of Andalusian Rome
gilded his head
and his laughter was a white nard
of salt and wit
How grand the bullfighter
as he moved in the ring
Such a man of the sierra
How sweet with the wheat
How hard with the spurs
How tender with the dew
How splendid at the fair
How fierce with the last
banderillas of the dusk

But now he sleeps
Now the moss and grass
open the flower of his skull
with their steady fingers
His blood comes singing
over marshlands and fields
slipping on the frozen horns
wavering soulless in the fog
stumbling on a thousand hoofs
like a long dark sad tongue
and pooling and dying
beside the Guadalquivir
river of the stars

O white wall of Spain
O black bull of sorrow
O Ignacio’s hard blood
O nightingale of his veins

No
I don’t want to look
For no cup will hold it
no swallows will sip it
nor can it be cooled
by a shimmering frost
Nor can flood of lilies
or crystal or song
coat it in silver
No
I don’t want to look


3

The Body Lies Here

The stone is a forehead of grieving dreams
with no curling water or icy cypresses
The stone is a shoulder for carrying time
and trees of tears and ribbons and planets

I have seen the gray rain chase the waves
that lift their gentle and riddled arms
so as not to be hunted by the heavy stone
that wastes the body and soaks up no blood

For the stone takes the seeds and the clouds
and the lark-skeletons and shadow-wolves
but it gives no sound   no glass and no fire
only the bullrings   and some have no walls


Here on the stone lies noble Ignacio
It’s over   And what now   Look at his body
Death has painted him with pale sulfurs
and cast him the head of a dark minotaur

It’s over   Rain leaks in through his mouth
Air in a frenzy flees his sagging chest
and Love—soaked in tears of snow—
warms up with the best of the herds

What did they say   Silence and a stench
rest  Here is a body that lifts away
in the bright shape once a nightingale
and we watch it fill with infinite holes

Who rumples the shroud   He does not speak truth
Here no one sings or cries in a corner
or digs in his spurs or scares the snake
Here all I want is a pair of round eyes
for watching this body that will not rest

Here I want to see the men with hard voices
the men who tame horses and master rivers
the men who rattle their skeletons and sing
with their mouths full of sunshine and flint

Here I want to see them looking at the stone
Looking at this body with its broken reins
I want them to show me the door that leads out
for this captain who is lashed to his death

I want them to teach me to cry like a river
with sweet mist and deep riverbanks
for bearing away his body  Let it be lost
and never hear the deep bray of the bulls

Let it be lost on the round bullring of the moon
that poses as a girl and a suffering bull
Let it be lost in the songless night of the fish
and in the white thicket of frozen smoke

Let them not hide his face under handkerchiefs
that teach him to bear the death he holds
Go Ignacio  Do not hear the hot roar
Sleep  Fly  Rest  Even the sea dies


4

The Soul Is Gone

The bull doesn’t know you or the fig tree
or the horses or the ants in your house
nor does the little boy or the afternoon
because you have died now forever

The spine of the stone doesn’t know you
nor the black satin in which you lie wasted
Your untold memories don't know you
because you have died now forever

And the autumn will come with seashells
and misty grapes and gathering hills
but no one will want to look in your eyes
because you have died now forever

Because you have died now forever
like all other dead men on this earth
like all the dead men who lie forgotten
in a heap of annihilated dogs


No one knows you  But I sing for you
I sing for your chiseled face and your grace
and the great seasoned age of your knowledge
your craving for death the savor of its mouth
and the sadness in your valiant joy

A long time will pass before another
Andalusian is born—if ever he is born—
so lucid and so rich in daring
I sing of his elegance with weeping words
and I remember a sad wind among the olives
Translated from Spanish

Translated from Spanish

Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías Read Poem

1.

La cogida y la muerte

A las cinco de la tarde.

Eran las cinco en punto de la tarde.

Un niño trajo la blanca sábana
a las cinco de la tarde.

Una espuerta de cal ya prevenida
a las cinco de la tarde.

Lo demás era muerte y sólo muerte
a las cinco de la tarde.

El viento se llevó los algodones
a las cinco de la tarde.

Y el óxido sembró cristal y níquel
a las cinco de la tarde.

Ya luchan la paloma y el leopardo
a las cinco de la tarde.

Y un muslo con un asta desolada
a las cinco de la tarde.

Comenzaron los sones de bordón
a las cinco de la tarde.

Las campanas de arsénico y el humo
a las cinco de la tarde.

En las esquinas grupos de silencio
a las cinco de la tarde.

¡Y el toro solo corazón arriba!
a las cinco de la tarde.

Cuando el sudor de nieve fue llegando
a las cinco de la tarde,
cuando la plaza se cubrió de yodo
a las cinco de la tarde,
la muerte puso huevos en la herida
a las cinco de la tarde.

A las cinco de la tarde.

A las cinco en punto de la tarde.

Un ataúd con ruedas es la cama
a las cinco de la tarde.

Huesos y flautas suenan en su oído
a las cinco de la tarde.

El toro ya mugía por su frente
a las cinco de la tarde.

El cuarto se irisaba de agonía
a las cinco de la tarde.

A lo lejos ya viene la gangrena
a las cinco de la tarde.

Trompa de lirio por las verdes ingles
a las cinco de la tarde.

Las heridas quemaban como soles
a las cinco de la tarde,
y el gentío rompía las ventanas
a las cinco de la tarde.

A las cinco de la tarde.

¡Ay qué terribles cinco de la tarde!
¡Eran las cinco en todos los relojes!
¡Eran las cinco en sombra de la tarde!

2
La sangre derramada

¡Que no quiero verla!
Dile a la luna que venga,
que no quiero ver la sangre
de lgnacio sobre la arena.

¡Que no quiero verla!

La luna de par en par,
caballo de nubes quietas,
y la plaza gris del sueño
con sauces en las barreras.

¡Que no quiero verla!
Que mi recuerdo se quema.

¡Avisad a los jazmines
con su blancura pequeña!

¡Que no quiero verla!

La vaca del viejo mundo
pasaba su triste lengua
sobre un hocico de sangres
derramadas en la arena,
y los toros de Guisando,
casi muerte y casi piedra,
mugieron como dos siglos,
hartos de pisar la tierra.

No.

¡Que no quiero verla!

Por las gradas sube Ignacio
con toda su muerte a cuestas.

Buscaba el amanecer,
y el amanecer no era.

Busca su perfil seguro,
y el sueño lo desorienta.

Buscaba su hermoso cuerpo
y encontró su sangre abierta.

¡No me digáis que la vea!
No quiero sentir el chorro
cada vez con menos fuerza;
ese chorro que ilumina
los tendidos y se vuelca
sobre la pana y el cuero
de muchedumbre sedienta.

¿Quién me grita que me asome?

¡No me digáis que la vea!

No se cerraron los ojos
cuando vio los cuernos cerca,
pero las madres terribles
levantaron la cabeza.

Y a través de las ganaderías
hubo un aire de voces secretas,
que gritaban a toros celestes,
mayorales de pálida niebla.

No hubo príncipe en Sevilla
que comparársele pueda,
ni espada como su espada
ni corazón tan de veras.

Como un río de leones
su maravillosa fuerza,
y como un torso de mármol
su dibujada prudencia.

Aire de Roma andaluza
le doraba la cabeza
donde su risa era un nardo
de sal y de inteligencia.

¡Qué gran torero en la plaza!
¡Qué buen serrano en la sierra!
¡Qué blando con las espigas!
¡Qué duro con las espuelas!
¡Qué tierno con el rocío!
¡Qué deslumbrante en la feria!
¡Qué tremendo con las últimas
banderillas de tiniebla!

Pero ya duerme sin fin.

Ya los musgos y la hierba
abren con dedos seguros
la flor de su calavera.

Y su sangre ya viene cantando:
cantando por marismas y praderas
resbalando por cuernos ateridos,
vacilando sin alma por la niebla,
tropezando con miles de pezuñas
como una larga, oscura, triste lengua,
para formar un charco de agonía
junto al Guadalquivir de las estrellas.

¡Oh blanco muro de España!
¡Oh negro toro de pena!
¡Oh sangre dura de Ignacio!
¡Oh ruiseñor de sus venas!
No.

¡Que no quiero verla!
Que no hay cáliz que la contenga,
que no hay golondrinas que se la beban,
no hay escarcha de luz que la enfríe,
no hay canto ni diluvio de azucenas,
no hay cristal que la cubra de plata.

No.

¡¡Yo no quiero verla!!

3
Cuerpo presente

La piedra es una frente donde los sueños gimen
sin tener agua curva ni cipreses helados.

La piedra es una espalda para llevar al tiempo
con árboles de lágrimas y cintas y planetas.

Yo he visto lluvias grises correr hacia las olas
levantando sus tiernos brazos acribillados,
para no ser cazadas por la piedra tendida
que desata sus miembros sin empapar la sangre.

Porque la piedra coge simientes y nublados,
esqueletos de alondras y lobos de penumbra;
pero no da sonidos, ni cristales, ni fuego,
sino plazas y plazas y otras plazas sin muros.

Ya está sobre la piedra Ignacio el bien nacido.

Ya se acabó; ¿qué pasa?

Contemplad su figura:
la muerte lo ha cubierto de pálidos azufres
y le ha puesto cabeza de oscuro minotauro.

Ya se acabó.

La lluvia penetra por su boca.

El aire como loco deja su pecho hundido,
y el Amor, empapado con lágrimas de nieve,
se calienta en la cumbre de las ganaderías.

¿Qué dicen?

Un silencio con hedores reposa.

Estamos con un cuerpo presente que se esfuma,
con una forma clara que tuvo ruiseñores
y la vemos llenarse de agujeros sin fondo.

4
Alma ausente

No te conoce el toro ni la higuera,
ni caballos ni hormigas de tu casa.

No te conoce el niño ni la tarde
porque te has muerto para siempre.

No te conoce el lomo de la piedra,
ni el raso negro donde te destrozas.

No te conoce tu recuerdo mudo
porque te has muerto para siempre.

El otoño vendrá con caracolas,
uva de niebla y montes agrupados,
pero nadie querrá mirar tus ojos
porque te has muerto para siempre.

Porque te has muerto para siempre,
como todos los muertos de la Tierra,
como todos los muertos que se olvidan
en un montón de perros apagados.

No te conoce nadie.

No.

Pero yo te canto.

Yo canto para luego tu perfil y tu gracia.

La madurez insigne de tu conocimiento.

Tu apetencia de muerte y el gusto de su boca.

La tristeza que tuvo tu valiente alegría.

Tardará mucho tiempo en nacer, si es que nace,
un andaluz tan claro, tan rico de aventura.

Yo canto su elegancia con palabras que gimen
y recuerdo una brisa triste por los olivos.

Of the Dark Doves Read Poem

In the branches of the laurel tree
I saw two dark doves
One was the sun
and one the moon
Little neighbors I said
where is my grave —
In my tail said the sun
On my throat said the moon
And I who was walking
with the land around my waist
saw two snow eagles
and a naked girl
One was the other
and the girl was none
Little eagles I said
where is my grave —
In my tail said the sun
On my throat said the moon
In the branches of the laurel tree
I saw two naked doves
One was the other
and both were none

Translated from the Spanish
Translated from the Spanish

Romance sonámbulo Read Poem

Verde que te quiero verde.

Verde viento.

Verdes ramas.

El barco sobre la mar
y el caballo en la montaña.

Con la sombra en la cintura,
ella sueña en su baranda
verde carne, pelo verde,
con ojos de fría plata.

Verde que te quiero verde.

Bajo la luna gitana,
las cosas la están mirando
y ella no puede mirarlas.

*

Verde que te quiero verde.

Grandes estrellas de escarcha,
vienen con el pez de sombra
que abre el camino del alba.

La higuera frota su viento
con la lija de sus ramas,
y el monte, gato garduño,
eriza sus pitas agrias.

¿Pero quién vendrá?

¿Y por dónde?

.

.

.

Ella sigue en su baranda
verde carne, pelo verde,
soñando en la mar amarga.

*

Compadre, quiero cambiar,
mi caballo por su casa,
mi montura por su espejo,
mi cuchillo por su manta.

Compadre, vengo sangrando,
desde los puertos de Cabra.

Si yo pudiera, mocito,
este trato se cerraba.

Pero yo ya no soy yo,
ni mi casa es ya mi casa.

Compadre, quiero morir
decentemente en mi cama.

De acero, si puede ser,
con las sábanas de holanda.

¿No ves la herida que tengo
desde el pecho a la garganta?

Trescientas rosas morenas
lleva tu pechera blanca.

Tu sangre rezuma y huele
alrededor de tu faja.

Pero yo ya no soy yo.

Ni mi casa es ya mi casa.

Dejadme subir al menos
hasta las altas barandas,
¡dejadme subir!, dejadme
hasta las verdes barandas.

Barandales de la luna
por donde retumba el agua.

*

Ya suben los dos compadres
hacia las altas barandas.

Dejando un rastro de sangre.

Dejando un rastro de lágrimas.

Temblaban en los tejados
farolillos de hojalata.

Mil panderos de cristal,
herían la madrugada.

*

Verde que te quiero verde,
verde viento, verdes ramas.

Los dos compadres subieron.

El largo viento, dejaba
en la boca un raro gusto
de hiel, de menta y de albahaca.

¡Compadre! ¿Dónde está, dime?

¿Dónde está tu niña amarga?

¡Cuántas veces te esperó!
¡Cuantas veces te esperara
cara fresca, negro pelo,
en esta verde baranda!

*

Sobre el rostro del aljibe,
se mecía la gitana.

Verde carne, pelo verde,
con ojos de fría plata.

Un carambano de luna,
la sostiene sobre el agua.

La noche se puso íntima
como una pequeña plaza.

Guardias civiles borrachos,
en la puerta golpeaban.

Verde que te quiero verde.

Verde viento.

Verdes ramas.

El barco sobre la mar.

Y el caballo en la montaña.

Two Evening Moons Read Poem

I

For Laurita, my sister’s friend

The moon is dead dead
— it will come back to life in the spring

when a south wind
ruffles the brow of the poplars

when our hearts yield their harvest of sighs

when the roofs wear their grass hats

The moon is dead dead
— it will come back to life in the spring


II

For Isabelita, my sister

The evening sings a lullaby
to the oranges

My little sister sings
“the earth is an orange”

The moon weeping says
“I want to be an orange”

You can’t be — my dear —
even if you turn pink
or a little bit lemon
How sad!
Translated from the Spanish
Translated from the Spanish

The Unfaithful Housewife Read Poem

Then I led her to the river
certain she was still a virgin
though she had a husband.

The fourth Friday in July,
as good as on a promise.

The street lights were vanishing
and the crickets flaring up.

Last bend out of town
I brushed her sleepy breasts.

They blossomed of a sudden
like the tips of hyacinths
and the starch of her petticoat
bustled in my ear like silk
slit by a dozen blades.

The pines, minus their halo
of silver, grew huger
and the horizon of dogs
howled a long way from the river.

Past the blackberry bushes,
the rushes and whitethorn,
beneath her thatch of hair,
I made a dip in the sand.

I took off my neckerchief.

She unstrapped her dress.

Me my gun and holster,
she her layers of slips.

.

.

Not tuberose, not shell,
has skin as half as smooth
nor does mirror glass
have half the shimmer.

Her hips flitted from me
like a pair of startled tench:
the one full of fire,
the other full of cold.

That night I might
as well have ridden
the pick of the roads
on a mother-of-pearl mare
without bridle or stirrups.

Gentleman that I am,
I won’t say back the scraps
she whispered to me.

It dawned out there
to leave my lip bitten.

Filthy with soil and kisses,
I led her from the river
and the spears of lilies
battled in the air.

I behaved only the way
a blackguard like me behaves.

I offered her a big creel
of hay-colored satins.

I had no wish to fall for her.

She has a husband after all,
though she was still a virgin
when I led her to the river.

Poems by Federico Garcia Lorca

Harry

Poems