Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias
(section 1)
1. Cogida and death
At five in the afternoon. It was exactly five in the afternoon. A boy brought the white sheet at five in the afternoon. A frail of lime ready prepared at five in the afternoon. The rest was death, and death alone.
The wind carried away the cottonwool at five in the afternoon. And the oxide scattered crystal and nickel at five in the afternoon. Now the dove and the leopard wrestle at five in the afternoon. And a thigh with a desolated horn at five in the afternoon. The bass-string struck up at five in the afternoon. Arsenic bells and smoke at five in the afternoon. Groups of silence in the corners at five in the afternoon. And the bull alone with a high heart! At five in the afternoon. When the sweat of snow was coming at five in the afternoon, when the bull ring was covered with iodine at five in the afternoon. Death laid eggs in the wound at five in the afternoon. At five in the afternoon. At five o'clockin the afternoon.
A coffin on wheels is his bed at five in the afternoon. Bones and flutes resound in his ears at five in the afternoon. Now the bull was bellowing through his forehead at five in the afternoon. The room was iridiscent with agony at five in the afternoon. In the distance the gangrene now comes at five in the afternoon. Horn of the lily through green groins at five in the afternoon. The wounds were burning like suns at five in the afternoon. At five in the afternoon. Ah, that fatal five in the afternoon! It was five by all the clocks! It was five in the shade of the afternoon!
Gacela of the Dead Child
Each afternoon in Granada, each afternoon, a child dies. Each afternoon the water sits down and chats with its companions.
The dead wear mossy wings. The cloudy wind and the clear wind are two pheasants in flight through the towers, and the day is a wounded boy.
Not a flicker of lark was left in the air when I met you in the caverns of wine. Not the crumb of a cloud was left in the ground when you were drowned in the river.
A giant of water fell down over the hills, and the valley was tumbling with lilies and dogs. In my hands' violet shadow, your body, dead on the bank, was an angel of coldness.
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Gacela of the Dark Death
I want to sleep the dream of the apples, to withdraw from the tumult of cemetries. I want to sleep the dream of that child who wanted to cut his heart on the high seas.
I don't want to hear again that the dead do not lose their blood, that the putrid mouth goes on asking for water. I don't want to learn of the tortures of the grass, nor of the moon with a serpent's mouth that labors before dawn.
I want to sleep awhile, awhile, a minute, a century; but all must know that I have not died; that there is a stable of gold in my lips; that I am the small friend of the West wing; that I am the intense shadows of my tears.
Cover me at dawn with a veil, because dawn will throw fistfuls of ants at me, and wet with hard water my shoes so that the pincers of the scorpion slide.
For I want to sleep the dream of the apples, to learn a lament that will cleanse me to earth; for I want to live with that dark child who wanted to cut his heart on the high seas.
El Balcón (Spanish Version)
Si muero Dejad el balcón abierto
El niño come naranjas (Desde mi balcón lo veo)
El segador siega el trigo (Desde mi balcón lo siento)
Si muero Dejad el balcón abierto
Fare Well (English Version)
If I die, leave the balcony open.
The little boy is eating oranges. (From my balcony I can see him.)
The reaper is harvesting the wheat. (From my balcony I can hear him.)
If I die, leave the balcony open!
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