Tuesday 20 August 2013

Let there be a landscape of open eyes




On 19 August 1936, Federico García Lorca was murdered by the fascist squads of General Franco. The fascist regime burned his books in public, and subsequently banned them. Federico García Lorca was the greatest modern Spanish poet and dramatist, and is celebrated as one of the most significant literary figures of all time. To this day, the place where his body rests remains unknown.



            In the sky there is nobody asleep. Nobody, nobody.
            Nobody is asleep.
            The creatures of the moon sniff and prowl about their cabins.
            The living iguanas will come and bite the men who do not dream,
            And the man who rushes out with his spirit broken will meet on the street corner
            The unbelievable alligator quiet beneath the tender protest of the stars.

            Nobody is asleep on earth. Nobody, nobody.
            Nobody is asleep.
            In a graveyard far off there is a corpse
            Who has moaned for three years
            Because of a dry countryside on his knee;
            And that boy they buried this morning cried so much
            It was necessary to call out the dogs to keep him quiet.

            Life is not a dream.  Careful!  Careful!  Careful!
            We fall down the stairs in order to eat the moist earth
            Or we climb to the knife edge of the snow with the voices of the dead dahlias.
            But forgetfulness does not exist, dreams do not exist;
            Flesh exists. Kisses tie our mouths
            In a thicket of new veins,
            And whoever his pain pains will feel that pain forever
            And whoever is afraid of death will carry it on his shoulders.

            One day
            The horses will live in the saloons
            And the enraged ants
            Will throw themselves on the yellow skies that take refuge in the eyes of cows.

            Another day
            We will watch the preserved butterflies rise from the dead
            And still walking through a country of gray sponges and silent boats
            We will watch our ring flash and roses spring from our tongue.
            Careful!  Be careful!  Be careful!
            The men who still have marks of the claw and the thunderstorm,
            And that boy who cries because he has never heard of the invention of the bridge,
            Or that dead man who possesses now only his head and a shoe,
            We must carry them to the wall where the iguanas and the snakes are waiting,
            Where the bear's teeth are waiting,
            Where the mummified hand of the boy is waiting,
            And the hair of the camel stands on end with a violent blue shudder.

            Nobody is sleeping in the sky. Nobody, nobody.
            Nobody is sleeping.
            If someone does close his eyes,
            A whip, boys, a whip!
            Let there be a landscape of open eyes
            And bitter wounds on fire.
            No one is sleeping in this world. No one, no one.
            I have said it before.

            No one is sleeping.
            But if someone grows too much moss on his temples during the night,
            Open the stage trapdoors so he can see in the moonlight
            The lying goblets, and the poison, and the skull of the theaters.




 

No comments: