“Duende” – After Lorca

Yo canto su elegancia con palabras que gimen
y recuerdo una Brisa triste por los olvies.
– from Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias, Federico Garcia Lorca

“I sing of his elegance with words that groan,”
“and I remember a sad breeze through the olive trees.”
– translation, Stephen Spender

The Song of the Deep

The deep song of primordial time, the sorrow,
the cathedral of beginnings, the lover’s glance
the gypsy’s fatal knife, the hero’s night of nights;

a slow drum beat, the lava underneath;
these are the songs of earth, black earth
that teach of death and love, of hate,

of wonder at the flesh, the touch
when lover’s cross at night, the sun
that offers its harsh light, the copper

meshed within the orb of time, the birth
of cries and mother’s tears, the age
of time’s slow daze against the spheres:

a stammer, a waver, an undulating howl,
the sea’s foam, the falling fountains of the sky;
broken timber in the forest, the crackle

of the fire that scatters ancient seeds, the trill
of falcon call as blackbirds scatter, the blood moon,
the rooster’s horn segmenting day from night;

a road begins and ends at dawn, a rusty arrow,
a dead bird that sits undying, a jackdaw’s screech
gathering the future before it, the raging:

the song of the abyss, a people,
a green veldt tree, a mountain,
the drift of stars, the rush of waves upon the shore,

the walkers between who shatter everything;
the city dwellers, the rotting cellars,
the ancient crimson roots, the twisted shoots,

the rising from the sunken asphalt, the reclaiming,
the lonely hill, the forgotten myth, the ancient story of the twins,
the world below the waves, the white stone caves, unraveling:

the breath of the Andalusian guitarist,
the tremolando of his chords –
a scream that is deeper than black;

an abyss become deep song in an Old Man’s hands.

– Steven Craig Hickman ©2014 Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author is strictly prohibited.