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

                                     With All Respect





    Trees, women and children
they are all the same:  Depth.
The voices, the caresses, the tidiness, the joy,
this knowing that at the end we are all each other.
Yes!  The ten fingers that I watch.

    Now the Sun is not horrendous like a well-placed cheek;
It isn’t a gown, or a voiceless lantern.
Nor is it the response you hear with bent knee,
or that difficulty of touching the borders with the whitest
     of eyes.
It is now the Sun the truth, the clarity, the constancy.
You chat with the mountain,
you exchange it for your heart:
You can follow stepping lightly.
The fish eye if we arrive at the river
 is just, the image of the joy that God prepares for us,
the ardent kiss that breaks our bones.

    Yes.  At the end it is life.  Oh, what egglike beauty
this spacious gift the valley builds for us,
this limitation where you can lean your head
to hear the best music, that of distant planets.

    Let us go quickly,
let us approach the bonfire.
Your petaled hands and mine of shells,
these delicious improvisations that we reveal to ourselves,
they are worthy for burning, for keeping confidence
    in tomorrow,
so the conversation can go on ignoring the dress.
I ignore the gown.  And you?
Dressed in three-hundred robes or hemp,
enveloped in my most vulgar gowns,
I conserve the dignity of the aurora and the bragging of the naked.

  If you caress me I will believe a storm
        is brewing  
and I will ask if the rays are of seven colors.
Or at best I will be thinking in the air
and in this light breeze that ruffles the defenseless skin.

    With the tip of my foot I don’t laugh,
better that I conserve my dignity,
and if I move across the stage I do so like a master,
like the most unwary little ant.

     And so by morning or afternoon
when the crowds arrive I salute with a gesture,
and I don’t reveal my heel because that is a vulgarity.
And so, I smile at them, I offer them my hand,
I let go a thought, an iridescent butterfly,
while I seal my protest turning into manure.



Vicente Aleixandre

                                    Suicide




Sad crystal flesh intangible to the crowd.
A light that shines like a lying breast.
Here by the moon my voice is truthful.
Listen to me gone quiet though the blade drowns you.

    I was that young man who one day
leaving the depths of his eyes
 sought truthful fish
 he could not see through his hands.

    Hands of eight mountains,
confabulation of stone,
pain of blood in cliff face
insensible to the teeth.

    Under the stars on point
there are screams that approach.
Under my coiled heart
mute tongues explode.

    Open the world to me, open;
I want to illuminate just a kiss,
some lips that irritate
heartless trees.

    There are hanging legs
sheltered by birds.
Come strange bridges
that tie together two muscles.

    An expiring shock
utters its unusual voice
and the feet by the torsos
aspire to the cup.

    Lights of the armpits, lights,
lights in the form of ankles,
and that narrow waist
that pierces the moon.

    The eyes are caresses of the wind,
they are a pain that will be forgotten shortly,
so the hairs will know how to speak slowly,
now that they fall over an ultimate hearing.

    Hearts with wings, nubile elbows,
that oppression that moves sweetly
a music birthed of the back.
The ignorance is the rubbing of two newborn chests.

    Oh seas that don’t exist under roots,
trees sustained over mouths that throb,
eyes that advance on the sky when low,
when over foreheads ideas are fingers.

    Blood in the cliffs, blood through the shocks,
branches that from their pulses grow toward voices,
body that hangs in the wind now without limitations,
wounded by tongues that suck its ants.



   

Vicente Aleixandre

                                       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

                                           28 November XXXV





firetongue fans her face in the flute the cup
which singing to her gnaws at the blue stabwound
so attractive seated
in the bull’s eye
inscribed in his head adorned with jasmine
awaits the swelling the candle the fragmented crystal
the wind enveloped in the collar of the broadsword
gushing caresses
divides the bread for the blindman and the lilac-
covered dove
and bursts open its utter cruelty against burning lips
the devious horn
that frightens with its gestures of goodbye the cathedral
that faints in her arms without a cry
bursting in her glance the threatening radio
that photographing in the kiss a nuisance of Sun
devours the aroma of the hour that falls
and transgresses the page that flies
undoes the little branch that carries immersed between
the wing that breathes
and the fear that smiles
the knife that jumps from contentment
leaving her still floating as she wants and
in whatever manner
at the precise and necessary moment
in the mouth of the well
the cry of the rose
strapped by the hand
like a small almsgiving



Pablo Ruiz Picassso

                                      Sleepwalker’s Romance




                        Green how I want you green.
                        Green wind. Green branches.
                        The boat out at sea
                        and the horse in the mountain.
                        With a shadow across her waist,
                        she dreams in her bannister,
                        green flesh, hair of green,
                        with eyes of cold silver.
                        Green how I want you green.
                        Under the gypsy moon,
                        those things are watching her
                        and she cannot see them.


                                              *



                        Green how I want you green.
                        Great starch stars
                        come with the shadow fish
                        that opens the route to dawn.
                        The fig tree rubs its wind
                        with the sandpaper of its branches,
                        and the mountain, conniving cat,
                        raises its bitter hackles.
                        But who will come?  And from where?
                        She remains in her bannister,
                        green flesh, hair of green,
                        dreaming in the bitter sea.
                             


                                                    *



                       Brother, I want to exchange
                       my horse for your house,
                       my saddle for your mirror,
                       my knife for your blanket.
                       Brother, I come bleeding
                       from the mountains of Cabra.
                       Young man, if I could,
                        I would seal this contract.
                        But I am no longer myself,
                        and my house is no longer my house.
                        Brother, I want to die
                        decently in my bed,
                        of iron, if it can be,
                        with sheets from  Holland.
                        Can’t you see my wound
                        from my chest to my throat?
                        Three hundred crimson roses
                         stain your white shirt.
                         Your blood seeps and reeks
                          about your waist.
                          But I am no longer myself,
                          and my house is no longer my house.
                          Let me climb at least,
                          let me climb, let me,
                          up to the green bannisters.
                          Balustrades of the moon
                          where the waters resound.


                                                               *



                          Up climb the two brothers
                           toward the high railings.
                           Leaving a track of blood.
                           Leaving a track of tears.
                           Tin lights tremble
                            in the treetops.
                            A thousand crystal tambourines
                            rend the daybreak.


                                                               *




                             Green how I want you green.
                             Green wind. Green branches.
                             The two brothers climb.
                             The strong wind leaves in the mouth
                             a strange taste of honey, of mint, of basil.
                             Brother!  Where is she, tell me?
                             Where is my bitter girl?
                             How long she’s waited for you!
                             How long she will wait,
                             face fresh, black hair,
                             in this green bannister!



                                                                 *




                             On the face of the cistern
                             the gypsy rocks.
                             Green flesh, black hair,
                             with eyes of cold silver.
                             A lunar icicle sustains her
                             over the water.
                             The night becomes intimate
                              like a small plaza.
                              Drunken civil guards
                              bang on the door.
                              Green how I want you green.
                              Green wind.  Green branches.
                              The boat out at sea.
                              And the horse in the mountain.
                                           
                                   
               


Federico Garcia Lorca              

The eye that you
see is
not an eye because
you see it; it is
an eye because it
sees you.





Antonio Machado