1910

                 (Intermission)





Those eyes of mine of nineteen-ten
didn’t see the burial of the dead,
nor the fiesta of ash cried over by the dawn,
nor the heart that trembles abandoned like a horse at sea.

Those eyes of mine of nineteen-ten
saw the white wall where the girls urinated,
the snout of the bull, the poisonous mushroom
and the incomprehensible moon that illumined in the corners
dried bits of lemon under the tough blackness of bottles.

Those eyes of mine in the pony’s neck,
in the pierced breast of Santa Rosa sleeping,
in the rooftops of love, with moans and fresh hands,
in a garden where cats were eating frogs.

Attic where old dust brings together statues and moss.
Boxes that keep the silence of devoured crab.
In the land where dream stumbles on its reality.
There my little eyes.

Don’t ask me anything.  I’ve seen that things
when they look for their course encounter its void.
There is a pain of hollows in the air without people
and in my eyes dressed creatures -- without nudity!


Federico Garcia Lorca