Sunday, January 15, 2006
'Ballad of the Spanish Civil Guard'
The sound of black horses.
The clatter of black horseshoes.
The glistening short cloaks
stained with ink and wax.
The skulls poured of lead
to prevent them from weeping.
Patent-leather souls that ride
the wind along the highroad.
Mournful hunchbacks
whose movements command
the hardened silences of the dark
and the fine sands of fear.
They go where they wish,
concealing in their minds
an uneasy astronomy
of ghostly pistols.
Oh, city of the gypsies!
With flags aloft on your corners.
Where the moon and the gourd
are filled with cherries.
Oh, city of the gypsies!
Who could see you and not remember?
City of pain and of musk
and of cinnamon towers.
When the night comes,
the night of death's own darkness,
the gypsies at their forges
hammer out suns and arrows.
A wounded horse
summons the people to their doorways.
The crowing of roosters crystalizes
along Jerez de la Frontera.
The wind, flying naked,
rounds a corner of surprise,
finding the night edged with silver,
the night of death's own darkness.
The Virgin and St. Joseph
throw down their castanets,
and seek out the gypsies
to warn of the coming blow.
The Virgin appears dressed
in the habit of a mayor's wife,
a gown of chocolate paper
with a collar of almonds.
St. Joseph moves his arms
beneath a mantle of silk,
while behind follows Pedro Domecq
with the three sultans of Persia.
The half-moon slumbers on
with the open eye of a crane.
Lantern-hung standards
invade the flat rooftops.
The slim-hipped dancers
are sobbing before their mirrors.
Water and shadow, shadow and water
along Jerez de la Frontera.
Oh, city of the gypsies!
With flags aloft on your corners.
They will extinquish the green luster
of your greatness.
Oh, city of the gypsies!
Who could see you and not remember?
You are left far from the sea
without combs to catch your parted hair.
They advance in ranks of two
upon the city of festivals.
Their cartridge belts heavy
with the smell of onions.
They advance in ranks of two.
Double uniformed in darkness.
The eyes of Heaven are blinded
and refilled with a fluid of spurs.
The city, asleep to fear,
is a multiplicity of doors.
Forty civil guards
steal through to sack her.
The clocks are stopped,
and to arouse no suspicions,
the brandy flasks
wear the mask of November.
A flight of long screams
lifts above the weathercocks.
Sabers sing in the breezes
to the skulls trampled underfoot.
Through alleys of vague shadow,
the old gypsies go keening
with their lumbering horses
and little jars of silver coin.
For the drunken streets
are swollen with sinister capes,
where all is given up to
the double bladed whirlwinds.
The gypsies are driven
to the Bethlehem gate.
St. Joseph, sorely wounded,
enshrouds a young maiden.
The obstinate rifles and bayonets
fill the night with a dark sound.
The Virgin gives last rites to the children
with a spittle of stars.
Still the Guardia Civil
advances, sowing fires like seeds,
bonfires where the naked youth
are put to burning.
Rosa of Camborios
moans softly on her doorstep
with her two severed breasts
placed on a silver tray.
And other girls are fleeing,
pursued by their long braids
through an air filled with the crackling
bloom of gunpowder's black roses.
When all the roof-tiles
are sown in the furrowed earth,
the dawn will match its shoulders
against a long contour of stone.
Oh, city of the gypsies!
While the flames surrond you,
the Guardia Civil has departed
through a tunnel of silence.
Oh, city of the gypsies!
Who could see you and not remember?
This search for you in my mind;
A play of moon and sand.
...by Federico Garcia Lorca
......translation by FossilGuy, 1982
.........illustration, pen and ink collage of Picasso, Goya, Dali and other 'elements' by FossilGuy, 1983
# posted by Clear Creek Girl : 11:41 AM
Comments:
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I really like this one.Yesterday I went to Half Price Books which is of course not half price.The prices are actually high.A book that was priced at 2.50 when it first came out is now 18.50.Anyway I found Lorca's New York Poetry a critical study of Lorca's Poeta En Nueva York by Ricard L Predmore.It's a good little study of the symbolism Lorca used.Like horses,irises and apples to name a few.
To RC....
That sounds interesting. I had another book of his poems that contained some commentary, but haven't been able to find it. It went into the 'dark star' / bitter theme that came from the gypsy culture. I may have written about that aspect in my paper ... if so, I will post it. Also found that I'd written a poem for Lorca, out of the feelings that I'd had while working on his material. I will be posting it too.
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That sounds interesting. I had another book of his poems that contained some commentary, but haven't been able to find it. It went into the 'dark star' / bitter theme that came from the gypsy culture. I may have written about that aspect in my paper ... if so, I will post it. Also found that I'd written a poem for Lorca, out of the feelings that I'd had while working on his material. I will be posting it too.
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