Today in my heart
I feel a vague tremor of stars,
but my path is lost
in the soul of the mist.
The light clips my wings,
and my sorrow
is dipping memories
in the fountain of idea.
- Federico García Lorca, Autumn Song. (November 1918, Granada) (first verse). transl. Catherine Brown in Federico García Lorca: A Bilingual Edition, p. 19.
Between your love for me and mine for you
—air of stars and tremor of plant—
a thicket of anemones raises
with a dark moan an entire year.
— Federico García Lorca, from Sonnet of the Garland of Roses, p. 831.
Black are the horses,
the horseshoes are black.
Glistening on their capes
are stains of ink and of wax.
Their skulls—and this is why
they do not cry—are cast in lead.
They ride the roads
with souls of patent leather.
Hunchbacked and nocturnal,
they command, where they appear,
the silence of dark rubber
and fears of fine sand.
They go as they will,
and hidden in their heads
is a vague astronomy
of phantasmagoric pistols.
—Federico García Lorca, 1926. Ballad of the Spanish Civil Guard. To Juan Guerrero, Consul General of Poetry, lines 1-16, trans. Will Kirklan and Christopher Maurer, Federico García Lorca: A Bilingual Edition, p. 591.
Lorca was shot by the Spanish Civil Guard shortly after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.
Today is the anniversary of the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). For the next few days this space will be dedicated to artists’ responses to the War.
Odilon Redon, Butterflies. 1913. Oil on canvas, 64.8 x 49.8 cm.
My garden is the garden of possibilities, the garden of what is not, but could (and at times should) have been, the garden of theories that passed invisibly by and children who have not been born. Each word in the poem was a butterfly, and I have had to hunt them down one by one.
- Federico García Lorca, on “The Forest of Lunar Grapefruits”. 1923 letter, transl. Christopher Maurer in Federico García Lorca: A Bilingual Edition.
(Source: picasaweb.google.com)
Federico García Lorca: In a Corner of the Sky
The old
star
shuts her bleary eyes.
The new
star
wants to paint the night
blue.
(In the firtrees on the mountain:
fireflies.)
—
transl. Jerome Rothenberg
(Source: books.google.com)
Some Souls …
February 8, 1920
Some souls
have blue stars,
mornings pressed
between leaves of time,
and chaste corners
with an ancient
murmur of nostaglia
and dreams.
Other souls have
suffering phantoms
of passion. Fruits
worm-eaten. Echoes
of a burnt voice
that comes in
from a distance
like a current
of shadow. Memories
empty of lament.
Crumbs of kisses.
My soul has long
been ripe; it decays,
murky with mystery.
Childish stones
gnawed by illusion
fall on the waters
of my thought.
Every stone says:
“God is far away!”
— Federico García Lorca, trans. Catherine Brown.
(Source: books.google.com)
Alberto de Pedro: Collage of García Lorca. Calle de Montserrat 30, Madrid. January 2011.
(Source: escritoenlapared.com)
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