Poems
Below are four poems by Lorca with relatively recent translations (the oldest translation is from 1988). Since Lorca was a major poet (and he was a poetic dramatist), it seems appropriate to include some of his poetry. I have chosen four pieces from different eras of his life. In doing so, they reveal Lorca as a writer with a multitude of narrative voices and interests, not a man whose writing can be reduced to an easily-defined, singular style. It's worth noting that unlike his later plays, his poetry is completely devoid of politics. This is because Lorca believed that theatre, not poetry, was the ideal artform to enact social change.
The poems can also be downloaded as a PDF below. Though from different translators, all of these poems were eventually collected in the book Collected Poems, edited by Christopher Maurer.
The poems can also be downloaded as a PDF below. Though from different translators, all of these poems were eventually collected in the book Collected Poems, edited by Christopher Maurer.
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The Unfaithful Wife (from "The Gypsy Ballads")
To Lydia Cabrera and her black girl
So I took her to the river.
I thought she wasn't married,
but she had a husband.
It was St. James' eve,
and almost as if we agreed.
The streetlights went out,
the crickets went on.
At the far edge of town,
I touched her sleeping breasts.
They opened to me suddenly
like fronds of hyacinth.
The starch of her petticoat
made a sound in my ears
like a piece of silk
being ripped by ten knives.
Silver light gone from their leaves,
the trees have grown bigger,
and a horizon of dogs
barks far from the river.
Out beyond the brambles,
the hawthorns and the reeds,
beneath her mane of hair
I made a hollow in the sedge.
I took off my necktie.
She took off her dress.
I, my belt and pistol.
She, four bodices.
No silken shell or spikenard
is finer than her skin,
nor did moons or mirrors
ever glow like this.
Her thighs eluded me
like startled fish,
one half filled with fire,
the other half with cold.
That night the road I ran
was the finest of them all,
without a bridle or stirrup
on a filly made of pearl.
As a man, I won't repeat
the things she said to me.
The light of understanding
has made me more discreet.
I took her from the river
soiled with kisses and sand.
The sabers of the irises
were stabbing at the breeze.
I behaved as what I am.
As a true-born gypsy.
I gave her a sewing basket
made of straw-gold satin,
and refused to fall in love
because she had a husband,
though she said she wasn't married
when I took her to the river.
-Translated by Will Kirkland
Selections from "Mirror Suite"
Symbol
Christ,
a mirror
in each hand.
He multiplies
his shadow
He projects his heart
through his black looks.
I believe!
The Giant Mirror
We live beneath
a giant mirror.
Man is blue!
Hosanna!
Reflection
Lady Moon.
(Did someone shatter the quicksilver?)
No.
What child has flicked on
the lantern?
Even a butterfly could
blow you out.
Be quiet!... (Can it really!)
That glowworm
is the moon!
Rays
Everything's a fan.
Brother, open up your arms.
God is the pivot.
Replica
Only a single bird
is singing.
The air is cloning it.
We hear through mirrors.
Earth
We walk on
an unsilvered
mirror,
a crystal surface
without clouds.
If lilies would grow
backwards,
if roses would grow
backwards,
if all those roots
could see the stars
and the dead not close
their eyes,
we would become like swans.
Capriccio
Behind each mirror
is a dead star
and a baby rainbow
sleeping.
Behind each mirror
is a blank forever
and a nest of silences
too young to fly.
The mirror is the wellspring,
becomes mummy, closes
like a shell of light
at sunset.
The mirror
is the mother of dew,
the book of desiccated
twilights, echo become flesh.
Initium
Adam and Eve.
The serpent cracked
the mirror
in a thousand pieces,
and the apple
was his rock.
Air
The air
pregnant with rainbows
shatters its mirrors
over the grove.
-Translated by Jerome Rothenberg
Ghazal of Dark Death (from "The Tamarit Divan")
I want to sleep the sleep of apples,
far away from the uproar of cemeteries.
I want to sleep the sleep of that child
who wanted to cut his heart out on the sea.
I don't want to hear that the dead lose no blood.
that the decomposed mouth is still begging for water.
I don't want to find out about grass-given martyrdoms,
or the snake-mouthed moon that works before dawn.
I want to sleep just a moment,
a moment, a minute, a century.
But let it be known that I have not died:
that there is a stable of gold in my lips,
that I am the West Wind's little friend,
that I am the enormous shadow of my tears.
Wrap me at dawn in a veil,
for she will hurl fistfuls of ants;
sprinkle my shoes with hard water
so her scorpion's sting will slide off.
Because I want to sleep the sleep of apples
and learn a lament that will cleanse me of earth;
because I want to live with that dark child
who wanted to cut his heart out on the sea.
-Translated by Catherine Brown
Landscape of a Vomiting Multitude (from "Poet in New York")
(Dusk at Coney Island)
The fat lady came first,
tearing out roots and moistening drumsticks.
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 into our throat.
There were murmurings 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 a cat choking down a frog,
but the dead who scratch with clay hands
on flint gates where clouds and deserts 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 in alcohol
and launching incredible ships
through the anemones of the piers.
I protect myself with this look
that flows from the 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.
But the fat lady went first
and the crowds kept looking for the 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.
-Translated by Greg Simon and Steven F. White
The Unfaithful Wife (from "The Gypsy Ballads")
To Lydia Cabrera and her black girl
So I took her to the river.
I thought she wasn't married,
but she had a husband.
It was St. James' eve,
and almost as if we agreed.
The streetlights went out,
the crickets went on.
At the far edge of town,
I touched her sleeping breasts.
They opened to me suddenly
like fronds of hyacinth.
The starch of her petticoat
made a sound in my ears
like a piece of silk
being ripped by ten knives.
Silver light gone from their leaves,
the trees have grown bigger,
and a horizon of dogs
barks far from the river.
Out beyond the brambles,
the hawthorns and the reeds,
beneath her mane of hair
I made a hollow in the sedge.
I took off my necktie.
She took off her dress.
I, my belt and pistol.
She, four bodices.
No silken shell or spikenard
is finer than her skin,
nor did moons or mirrors
ever glow like this.
Her thighs eluded me
like startled fish,
one half filled with fire,
the other half with cold.
That night the road I ran
was the finest of them all,
without a bridle or stirrup
on a filly made of pearl.
As a man, I won't repeat
the things she said to me.
The light of understanding
has made me more discreet.
I took her from the river
soiled with kisses and sand.
The sabers of the irises
were stabbing at the breeze.
I behaved as what I am.
As a true-born gypsy.
I gave her a sewing basket
made of straw-gold satin,
and refused to fall in love
because she had a husband,
though she said she wasn't married
when I took her to the river.
-Translated by Will Kirkland
Selections from "Mirror Suite"
Symbol
Christ,
a mirror
in each hand.
He multiplies
his shadow
He projects his heart
through his black looks.
I believe!
The Giant Mirror
We live beneath
a giant mirror.
Man is blue!
Hosanna!
Reflection
Lady Moon.
(Did someone shatter the quicksilver?)
No.
What child has flicked on
the lantern?
Even a butterfly could
blow you out.
Be quiet!... (Can it really!)
That glowworm
is the moon!
Rays
Everything's a fan.
Brother, open up your arms.
God is the pivot.
Replica
Only a single bird
is singing.
The air is cloning it.
We hear through mirrors.
Earth
We walk on
an unsilvered
mirror,
a crystal surface
without clouds.
If lilies would grow
backwards,
if roses would grow
backwards,
if all those roots
could see the stars
and the dead not close
their eyes,
we would become like swans.
Capriccio
Behind each mirror
is a dead star
and a baby rainbow
sleeping.
Behind each mirror
is a blank forever
and a nest of silences
too young to fly.
The mirror is the wellspring,
becomes mummy, closes
like a shell of light
at sunset.
The mirror
is the mother of dew,
the book of desiccated
twilights, echo become flesh.
Initium
Adam and Eve.
The serpent cracked
the mirror
in a thousand pieces,
and the apple
was his rock.
Air
The air
pregnant with rainbows
shatters its mirrors
over the grove.
-Translated by Jerome Rothenberg
Ghazal of Dark Death (from "The Tamarit Divan")
I want to sleep the sleep of apples,
far away from the uproar of cemeteries.
I want to sleep the sleep of that child
who wanted to cut his heart out on the sea.
I don't want to hear that the dead lose no blood.
that the decomposed mouth is still begging for water.
I don't want to find out about grass-given martyrdoms,
or the snake-mouthed moon that works before dawn.
I want to sleep just a moment,
a moment, a minute, a century.
But let it be known that I have not died:
that there is a stable of gold in my lips,
that I am the West Wind's little friend,
that I am the enormous shadow of my tears.
Wrap me at dawn in a veil,
for she will hurl fistfuls of ants;
sprinkle my shoes with hard water
so her scorpion's sting will slide off.
Because I want to sleep the sleep of apples
and learn a lament that will cleanse me of earth;
because I want to live with that dark child
who wanted to cut his heart out on the sea.
-Translated by Catherine Brown
Landscape of a Vomiting Multitude (from "Poet in New York")
(Dusk at Coney Island)
The fat lady came first,
tearing out roots and moistening drumsticks.
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 into our throat.
There were murmurings 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 a cat choking down a frog,
but the dead who scratch with clay hands
on flint gates where clouds and deserts 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 in alcohol
and launching incredible ships
through the anemones of the piers.
I protect myself with this look
that flows from the 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.
But the fat lady went first
and the crowds kept looking for the 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.
-Translated by Greg Simon and Steven F. White
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