Lorca

I've been revising a few of my translations of Federico Garcia Lorca, and feel it's time to post a few. Lorca was one of the greatest Spanish poets of the last century, and as I mentioned in an earlier posting, he was gunned down by one of Franco's hit men. Lorca was just 37.

VILLAGE

A cross
all alone on a bare mountain.
Clear water
and hundred-year-old olive trees.
In the alleyways
men with covered faces,
and on the rooftops
weathervanes turning,
endlessly
turning.
O village of loss,
deep in the Andalusia of weeping!


WHAT'S TRUE

It's so hard to love you
like this!

Because of this love
the air hurts me, and my heart,
and my hat.

Who will buy my
ribbon and the grief
of white cotton, to make
handkerchiefs with?

It's so hard
to love you like this!


GHAZAL OF THE FLIGHT

How many times I've lost myself at sea
with my ears full of freshly cut flowers,
with my tongue filled with love and anguish.
Many times I've lost myself at sea
as I've lost myself in the hearts of certain children.

There's not one person who when they give a kiss
doesn't feel the smile of faceless people.
And no one who touches a new born child
will forget the motionless skulls of horses.

Because roses search the forehead
for a tough landscape of bone
and a man's hands have no other job
than to imitate the roots beneath the earth.

As I lose myself in the hearts of certain children,
hundreds of times I've lost myself at sea.
And I'm unaware of the water as I search
for a death where the light will consume me entirely.


GRANADA AND 1850

From my room
I can hear the fountain.

One sprig of grape vine
and a shaft of sunlight.
They point toward a place
inside my heart.

Clouds are moving
through the August air.
And I dream that I am not dreaming
inside the fountain.


(Copyright 2006, Allan Cooper)