Crucifixion


                                                                                 For Miguel Benitez



The moon could stop itself at last through the ultra-white curve
            of the horses.
A ray of violet light that escaped the wound
projected in the sky the instant of a dead child’s
            circumcision.

The blood poured down the mountain and the angels searched for it
but the chalices were of wind and at last they could fill its shoes.
Lame dogs smoked their pipes and a hot leather
             pain
made grey the rounded lips of those who vomited
             in the corners.
And great howlings arrived from the south in an arid night.
And the moon burned with its candles the horses’
             phallus.
A tailor, specialist in purple,
buried the three female saints
and tutored a skull by the window’s glass.
Three boys in the slums circled around a white camel
that cried astonished because at dawn
it must pass without remedy through the eye of a needle.
Oh cross!  Oh nails!  Oh thorn!
Oh cleaved thorn in the bone waiting for the planets to
              oxidize!
Since no one could turn their head, the sky could unmask.
And then one could hear the great voice and the Pharisees said:
-- That damned cow has teats full of milk.

The throng closed shut the doors
and the rain fell in the streets determined to moisten the heart
while the afternoon became turgid with beatings and woodcutters
and the dark city agonized under the hammers
            of carpenters.
-- That damned cow
has teats of buckshot --,
said the Pharisees.
But the blood wet their feet and the filthy spirits
shattered blisters of lagoons over the walls
            of the temple.
We knew the precise moment of the salvation of our
             lives
because the moon washed the horses’ burns
             with water.
And so the cold ones left singing their songs
and the frogs ignited their tinderbox along the double banks
             of the river.
-- That damned cow, damned, damned,
will not let us sleep --, said the Pharisees,
and they left their houses for the tumult of the street,
pushing aside drunks and spitting salt
             of the sacrificed
while the blood followed them with the bleat of a lamb.


                                           *


It was so
and the earth awoke hurling tremulous moth rivers.




Federico Garcia Lorca