Federico García Lorca

Years ago, I watched the movie The Disappearance of Garcia Lorca.  It stars Andy Garcia, who was fantastic as Lorca.  His performance has stayed with me over the years and I have returned to Lorca's poetry repeatedly because of it.  The movie features the poem, Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías, which I have come to love, and will reproduce portions of here.  Unfortunately, I can not find this translation anywhere on the internet, but there are other versions around that give you the idea, if you are interested.

Excerpts from Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías,
by Federico García Lorca.
Translated by Galway Kinnell


1.  The Goring and the Death

At five in the afternoon.
It was exactly five in the afternoon.
A boy brought the linen sheet
at five in the afternoon.
A basket of lime standing ready
at five in the afternoon.
Everything else was death, only death,
at five in the afternoon.

Wind scattered bits of gauze
at five in the afternoon.
Oxide sowed glass and nickel
at five in the afternoon.
Now the dove battles with the leopard
at five in the afternoon.
And a thigh with a desolate horn
at five in the afternoon.
Now began the drums of a dirge
at five in the afternoon.
And the bells of arsenic and smoke
at five in the afternoon.
Silence gathered on every corner
at five in the afternoon.
And the bull alone with lifted heart!
at five in the afternoon.
When sweat of snow began
at five in the afternoon.
And the bull-ring was drenched in iodine
at five in the afternoon.
death laid its eggs in the wound
at five in the afternoon.
At five in the afternoon.
At exactly five in the afternoon.


          ***********


2.  The Spilled Blood

I don't want to see it!

Tell the moon to come,
for I don't want to see
Ignacio's blood on the sand.

I don't want to see it!

The wide-open moon.
A house of unmoving clouds,
and the gray bull-ring of dream
with willows at its barreras.

I don't want to see it!
Remembering burns.
Send word to the jasmines
to bring their tiny whiteness!

I don't want to see it!


          ***********


Ignacio climbs the steps
carrying all his death on his shoulders.
He was looking for daybreak,
and daybreak was no more.
He seeks his confident profile
and drowsiness disorients him.
He was looking for his beautiful body
and found his upwelling blood.
Don't ask me to see it!
I don't want to feel the gush
each time with less force,
the gush that lights up 
the rows of seats and spills
over the corduroy and leather 
of a thirsting crowd.
Who cries to me to come forward?
I don't want to see it!


          ***********


4.  Absent Soul

The bull doesn't know you, nor the fig tree,
nor the horses, nor the ants of your own house.
The child doesn't know you, nor does the afternoon,
because you have died forever.


          ***********


No one knows you.  No.  But I sing of you.
I sing, for later on, of your profile and your grace.
The noble maturity of your understanding.
Your appetite for death and the taste of its mouth.
The sadness in your valiant gaiety.

There will not be born for a long time, if ever,
an Andalusian like him, so open, so bold in adventure.
I sing of his elegance in words that moan
and I remember a sad breeze in the olive grove.