NINE POEMS BY FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
—Translations by Will Spires dedicated to Chris Carnes
1. BALLAD OF THE SPANISH CIVIL GUARD
Black the horses,
Black their shoes
Stains of ink and beeswax
Refract from the rider’s cloaks.
You don’t catch them weeping
From skulls made of lead,
Hunchbacked, nocturnal by habit,
they clop down the cobbles
with patent-leather boots
muffling those whom they rouse
like black rubber
and strewing fear like fine-grained sand.
They go where they please, thank you.
Their eyes, should they look aloft,
resolve the starry constellations
into blurry pistols.
Oh, city of gypsies!
Banners on your streets…
black cherries with pumpkin jam,
underneath the moon.
Oh, city of gypsies!
Who could see you and forget?
City of sorrow and musk
and cinnamon towers.
Darkness closes in,
Night wraps itself in black,
The gypsies in their shops
forge suns and arrows.
A gut-shot stallion
neighs in anguish door to door.
Glass roosters crow
above Jerez de la Frontera.
The naked wind, coming round again,
takes the street corner by surprise
in the still, silver night,
in the street that drapes itself in black.
Mary and St. Joseph
have misplaced their castanets,
(Shake down the gypsies;
Maybe they know where.)
Mary’s all dressed up
in chocolate colored paper,
with almonds strung around her neck,
like she ran the whole city,
St. Joseph flaps his arms
under his silk cape.
Pedro Domeq tags along
with three Persian sultans.
The half-moon, ecstatic,
dreams of a crane flying by.
You can’t see the rooftops
for all the pennants and street lamps.
Snake-hipped ballerinas
Weep before their mirrors.
Water and shadow, shadow and water
length and breadth of Jerez de la Frontera.
Oh, City of Gypsies,
Street corners festooned with banners,
douse those green lanterns!
The Civil Guard is coming through!
Oh, City of Gypsies
Who can see you and forget?
Leave her high and dry
No combs to part her locks.
Two abreast, the Civil Guard
crashes the party.
The evergreen wreaths
get all mixed up with the cartridge belts.
Relentless, the Guard trots double file
through the curtains of night
taking the very stars above for nothing more
than roweled spurs in a glass display case.
Through gates ajar
forty Civil Guardsmen ride in
to plunder the fearless city,
no quarter given.
The clock chimes mute themselves
the bottles of cognac
huddle back and wait it out on the shelves.
Howls of anguish wheel in the air
swooping through the weathervanes.
Riders stomp the breeze rough-shod
and their sabers slice right through it.
Gypsy women make a run for it
down the streets of shadows
with their drowsy horses
and their jugs of coins.
Fearsome cloaks soar
Up the steep streets,
whirlwinds of scissors in their wake.
The gypsies hunker down
at the Gate of Bethlehem.
St. Joseph, wounded to the quick,
draws a shroud over a maiden.
All night long the gunfire won’t let up.
The Virgin soothes children
with drops of star foam from her lips,
but the Civil Guard rolls in
sowing live coals
where Imagination, young and naked,
sets itself alight and burns down to ash.
Rosa of the Camborios
grieves at her threshold,
with her breasts served up on a platter.
Other girls, braids in the wind behind them,
run as fast as their little legs can carry them
while black shell bursts
sift down on them like fallen petals.
And when all of the tiled rooftops
Are plowed under,
why, then, rosy-fingered Aurora shrugs it all off,
And turns her stony face away.
Oh, city of Gypsies,
the flames close in on you—
but the Civil Guard rides on
through a tunnel of silence.
City of gypsies,
Who, having seen you, could then forget?
Seek and find them on my forehead,
where the moon plays on the sand.
2. THE SIX STRINGS
The guitar
brings dreams to tears.
Doomed souls take flight
From its round mouth
and like a tarantula
it weaves a starry web
to snare the sighs
that float upon
its black wooden cistern.
3. CÓRDOBA
Córdoba
remote, alone.
Black pony, full moon
saddlebags packed with olives.
Know these roads though I may
I won’t make it to Córdoba.
Wind and prairie,
Black pony, blood moon.
Death has me fixed in her sights
looking down from the towers of Córdoba.
A long road,
a fine pony.
If only Death
weren’t lurking in Córdoba.
Córdoba,
remote and lone.
5. ROMANZA DE LA LUNA
The moon called at the forge
tuberoses around her waist.
A lad gazes, eyes fixed upon her,
beholding.
In the crackling electric air
lubricious and pure
she beckons toward her breasts
of hard shining tin.
Moon, moon, make a good run, moon.
Should the gypsies come back to their shop
they’ll hammer your heart
into white finger rings and chokers.
Give me leave to dance, lad.
Once the gypsies come back
it’ll be your turn on the anvil
with your eyes shut tight.
Flee, oh moon; flee and tarry not.
I can already feel their hoofbeats.
Don’t trample on
my crisply-starched pallor.
The rider is close now,
nakers[1] sounding cross the fields.
The lad’s in the forge
eyes shut tight.
Brazen and dreamy, the gypsies
move in through the olive groves
hooded eyes
heads held high.
How that nightbird hoots,
How it calls from its branches!
The moon traverses the night sky
leading the boy by the hand.
In the forge the gypsies weep,
crying out aloud
while, keeping watch,
the wind is looking down.
[1] Nakers (f. Arabic naqareh) are horse-borne kettle drums , from North Africa
6. THE GUITAR
The lament of the guitar begins
smashing our morning hair-of-the-dog glasses.
Once it starts to weep
There’s no shutting it up.
Don’t even try.
Weeping a sole lone note,
Falling like water,
Just as the wind weeps
over the snow.
Block it out? Forget it, don’t bother.
It weeps for distant things
Just as the warm southern sand
pleads for white camellias,
like an arrow loosed toward nothing,
an afternoon with no morning,
and the first bird to die on the branch.
Poor wounded guitar,
Five swords, right smack through the heart.
7. UP AND AWAY
I snuck up by a pine tree
To see if I could spot her
I saw nothing but the dust
From the coach that bore her off.
Up and away then,
the little scuffle’s run its course
now the lead is really flying.
On the walled-in street
Somebody’s killed a dove.
I’ll hand pick
Flowers for her crown.
That’s quite enough of that,
The fracas has died down
And the fight’s on now for sure.
Dove, don’t fly afield
I’m a hunter, after all.
And if I shoot you on the wing
Mine will be the greater pain
And mine the loss, in the long run.
Fine, enough said
The dust-up has petered out.
Now the weather’s got bullets in it.
8. MOONRISE
When the moon goes forth
The bells die away
And one can’t make out the pathways.
When the moon comes out
The ocean blankets the land
the heart a lonesome island
in an infinite void.
Oh, please, one does not
eat oranges
beneath a full moon.
Correctly, one partakes
of fruits cool and green.
When the moon sets sail
With a hundred countenances all of a piece
The silver coins
Weep in their leathern case.
9. THE OLD LIZARD
Along the sun-baked trail
I spied a fine old lizard
(one percent crocodile)
in his meditations.
Tricked out in green coat tails
like the devil’s abbot
pressed shirt
starched collar
and the pathetic air of an old professor.
How wistfully those clouded eyes
of a washed-up artist
watched the afternoon give way.
Out for an evening stroll, my scaly friend?
Better take your walking stick!
Thou art old, Sir Lizard
and the street urchins
might put a scare in you.
What do you discern on this pathway,
bedazzled philosopher,
beneath the mirage of an afternoon sky
so thirsty that it crinkles the horizon?
Are you hoping for a cool blue blessing
From a dying sky?
A pennyworth’s fragment of a star?
Maybe you’re browsing through Lamartine
while cool silver cascades of birdsong
slake your parched throat.
Lordly dragon, ruler of frogs,
your gaze refracts the setting sun
with a resplendent humanity;
your thoughts ripple and drift
across the dark pools
of your scarified eyes.
Any chance you’re looking for
that lovely lady lizard?
She who was green as the May-time wheat,
blithe as tresses
floating on crystal seepsprings?
Yes, her, that same Lizardess
who put you down flat
and left you standing in the field,
(Another illusion shattered
down among the watery reeds.)
But live it up! What the hell, anyway?
You and me, Sir Lizard, we’re much alike.
Puff up your double chin
like an archbishop and say,
“I oppose the serpent.”
Now the sun steeps in the mountains’ open cup.
The road’s jammed up
the flocks head home.
Time to bundle up and go.
I’m stepping off this dry path;
You stay here and mull things over.
You’ll have time to stargaze
When the worms come to eat you
and they’ll take their time.
Off you go then,
scuttle off to your cricket village,
I give you good night,
my esteemed friend,
Sir Lizard.
Nobody left in the fields now,
mist-covered mountains fading,
nobody on the road …
Even so, now and then,
a cuckoo calls from the dark poplar trees