Federico García Lorca

translated from the Spanish by Michelle Cliff

Gacela of the Terrible Presence

I desire that the water lose its river-bed.
I desire that the wind lose its valleys.

I desire that the night lose its eyes
and my heart be without its gold flower

That the oxen speak with the great leaves
and the earthworm die of darkness;

that the teeth of the skull shine
and yellow inundate the silk.

I can see the duel of wounded night
battling, coiled with midday.

I resist a sunset of green venom
and shattered arches where time suffers.

But do not light your pure nakedness
like a black cactus open in the rushes.

Leave me longing for obscure planets,
but do not show me your cool waist.

Note
A gacela is an Arabic poetic form, usually erotic in content.

Gacela of Dark Death

I want to sleep the dream of apples,
to remove myself from the tumult of cemeteries.
I want to sleep the dream of that child
who wished to cut his heart on the high seas.

Do not tell me again that the dead do not lose their blood;
that the rotting mouth continues to ask for water.
I do not want to be told what martyrdom grass offers,
nor the moon with the mouth of a snake
which labors before daybreak.

I want to sleep a little while,
a little while, a minute, a century;
but all must know I have not died;
that there is a stable of gold on my lips;
that I am the little friend of the West wind;
that I am the boundless shadow of my tears.

Cover me by dawn with a veil,
because fistfuls of ants will be hurled at me,
and hard water will wet my shoes
so that the pincer of the scorpion may slide.

Because I want to sleep the dream of apples
to learn a lament to cleanse me of earth;
because I want to live with that dark child
who wished to cut his heart on the high seas.

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Federico García Lorca (1898-1936) is one of the most important Spanish poets of the twentieth century. His books of poetry include Romancero Gitano (The Gypsy Ballads) (1928), El poema del Cante Jondo (1932), Lament for the Death of a Bullfighter and Other Poems (1937), and Poeta en Nueva York (Poet in New York) (1940). He was murdered by the Nationalists at the start of the Spanish civil war; his books were burned in Granada's Plaza del Carmen and were soon banned from Franco's Spain. To this day, no one knows where the body of Federico García Lorca rests. Michelle Cliff's novel Free Enterprise has recently been reissued by City Lights Books. Her translation of Pier Paolo Pasolini's "Gramsci's Ashes" appeared in the PN Review (UK), and will be published in NO: a journal of the arts. contents | previous | next