Federico
Garcia Lorca (1898—1936)
The
Interrupted Concert
The
half moon, a fermata
somnolent and frozen,
marks a pause and splits
the midnight harmony.
Blanketed
in sedge,
the ditches protest mutely,
and frogs, the muezzins of shadow,
have fallen silent.
In
the old town tavern
the sad music stopped,
and the oldest of stars
has damped its hurdy-gurdy.
The
wind has settled
in dark mountain hollows,
and a solitary poplar,
Pythagoras of chaste plains,
wants to lift up its hundred-year-old hand
and slap the moon in the face.
(tr. Catherine Brown)
Sesame
(from Moments
of Song)
The reflected is
the real.
The river
& sky
are portals that bear us
toward the eternal.
Through streambeds of frogs
or streambeds of stars
our love will go from us, singing
the dawn of the great escape.
The real is
the reflected.
There is only one heart
& one single wind.
Don't you weep! It's the same
from close up
as far out.
Nature: eternal
Narcissus.
(tr. Jerome Rothenberg)
Seashell
Someone brought
me a seashell.
Singing inside
is a sea from a map.
My heart
fills up with water
and little tiny fish,
silvery, shadowy.
Someone brought
me a seashell.
(tr. Alan S. Trueblood)
Third Page
(Conjurations)
(from White Album)
(Snow stars)
There are mountains
that want to be
water
& that conjure up stars
over their shoulders.
(Clouds)
And there are mountains
That want to have
Wings
& that conjure up clouds,
like white clouds.
(tr. Jerome Rothenberg)
REASON has moons, but moons
not hers,
Lie mirrored on the sea,
Confounding her astronomers,
But, O! delighting
me.
---Ralph Hodgson (1871—1962)