Landscape of the Vomiting Crowd
                 
                                          (Twilight in Coney Island)






The fat woman came out in front
tearing up roots and wetting
           drumskins .
The fat woman,
who turns agonized squid inside out.
The fat woman enemy of the moon,
who would run through the streets and uninhabited rooms
and would leave small dove skulls in corners
and raise furies of banquets of centuries
           past
and called to the bread devil
over hills of a vanished sky
and filtered an anguish of light
through the most subterranean circulations.

These are the graveyards.  I know it. These are the graveyards
and the pain of kitchens buried under sand.
These are the dead, the pheasants and apples of another hour
 pushing against our throats.


The sounds of the vomiting jungle have arrived
with vacant women and hot waxen children
with fermented trees and untiring waiters
who serve salt plates
under saliva harps.

Without remedy my child.  Vomit!  There is no remedy.
It is not the vomit of the Hussars
on the prostitutes’ breasts
nor the vomit of the cat who swallowed a frog by mistake.
It’s the others! who scratch with earthen hands
the flint doors where fungi and pastries rot.

The fat woman came out in front
with people in boats and taverns and
            gardens.
The vomit delicately agitated her drums
between sanguine girls who ask protection
          from the moon.
Oh my! Oh my! Oh my!
This glance was mine, but is mine no longer.
This glance that trembles naked from alcohol
and sends off incredible boats through anemones
          off the quay.
I defend myself with this glance
that flows from waves where dawn dare not arrive.

I, poet without arms, lost
amid the crowd that vomits,
without effusive horse to cut
the thick moss of my temples.

But the fat woman kept coming
and the people searched for pharmacies
where the bitter tropic settled.

Only when they raised the flag and the first curs
             arrived
did the entire city throng together
at the railings of the pier.



Federico Garcia Lorca