The Guitar by Federico García Lorca for National Poetry Month

[dragonyphoenix]

The Guitar by Federico García Lorca
Translated by Cola Franzen

The weeping of the guitar
begins.
The goblets of dawn
are smashed.
The weeping of the guitar
begins.
Useless
to silence it.
Impossible
to silence it.
It weeps monotonously
as water weeps
as the wind weeps
over snowfields.
Impossible
to silence it.
It weeps for distant
things.
Hot southern sands
yearning for white camellias.
Weeps arrow without target
evening without morning
and the first dead bird
on the branch.
Oh, guitar!
Heart mortally wounded
by five swords.

Comments

[mostly-irish.livejournal.com]

Oh I just LOVE this.

[diebirchen.livejournal.com]

José Thomas, Eliot Fisk, and many others, and that's on recently. Classical guitar: beauty incarnate.

Lorca

[jeffery forney (from livejournal.com)]

I think it is a Tarot reference. The goblets of dawn represent happiness (X Cups). The three of swords represents heartbreak and the five of swords the cause of the heartbreak--hostility among friends. Maybe a reference to Lorca's friendship with Dali and the falling out they had with Luis Buñuel.