Rome




Apples lightly wounded
by fine silver swords,
clouds cloven by coral hands
that carry on their back an almond of fire,
arsenic fishes like sharks,
sharks with blotches of tears to blind a multitude,
roses that wound
and needles installed in gutters of blood,
enemy worlds and loves covered in worms
will fall over you.

They will fall over the grand dome
that rubs with sacred oil the military tongues,
there where a man urinates on a startling dove
and spits crushed carbon
surrounded by thousands of little bells.

Because now there is no one who can share the bread and wine
nor who can cultivate herbs in the mouth of a dead man,
nor who can unwind the threads of repose,
nor who can cry for the elephants’ wounds.
There are not more than a million blacksmiths
forging chains for the children who must come.
There are not more than a million carpenters
who craft coffins without crosses.
There are not crowds of laments
which pull back the ropes in anticipation of the ball.
The man who urinates on the dove should have spoken.
He should have cried naked amidst the columns
and given himself an injection to catch leprosy
and cry a sob so terrible
that it would dissolve his rings and his diamond telephones.
But the man dressed in white
ignores the mystery of the corn stalk,
ignores the twin of the woman in labor,
ignores that Christ can still give water,
ignores that the coin burns the kiss of the prodigy
and spills oxen blood at the idiotic beak of the pheasant.

The maestros teach the children
of a marvelous light that comes from the mountain;
but what arrives is a reunion of sewers
where the dark nymphs of cholera scream.
The maestros signal with devotion the enormous
      healing domes
but beneath the statues there is no love,
there is no love under the eyes of certain crystal.
Love is in the flesh torn asunder by thirst
and in the tiny shack that fights its inundation.

Love is in the ditches where serpents fight from
      hunger,
in the sorrowful sea that stirs the seagulls’ cadavers
and in the pure darkness a sharp kiss beneath pillows.
But the old man with translucent hands
will say:  love, love, love,
claimed for the millions of the moribund;
will say:  love, love, love,
in the stretched tissue of tenderness;
will say:  peace, peace, peace,
in the shiver of knives and manes of dynamite;
will say:  love, love, love,
until they seal his lips with silver.

In the meanwhile,
the blacks who recover their spittoons,
the young men who tremble under the pallid terror
      of the directors,
the women drowned in mineral oils,
the throngs of hammer, violin, or cloud
must scream though their brains are scattered on the wall,
must scream in front of the domes,
must scream insane with fire,
must scream insane with snow,
must scream with heads full of shit,
must scream with the joining of nights,
until the cities tremble like girls
and tear at oil deposits and music.

Because we want our daily bread
flower of the alder tree and perennial tenderness threshed;
because we want the fulfillment of the Earth’s will
that gives to everyone its fruits.



Federico Garcia Lorca