Ay, the pain it costs me
to love you as I love you!

For love of you, the air, it hurts,
and my heart,
and my hat, they hurt me.

Who would buy it from me,
this ribbon I am holding,
and this sadness of cotton,
white, for making hankerchiefs with?

Ay, the pain it costs me
to love you as I love you!

A rose in the high garden that you desire.
A wheel in the pure syntax of steel.
The mountain stripped of impressionist mist.
Greys looking out from the last balustrades.

Modern painters in their black studios,
Sever the square root's sterilized flower.
In the Seine's flood an iceberg of marble
freezes the windows and scatters the ivy.

Man treads the paved streets firmly.
Crystals hide from reflections' magic.
Government has closed the perfume shops.
The machine beats out its binary rhythm.

An absence of forests, screens and brows
Wanders the roof-tiles of ancient houses.
The air polishes its prism on the sea
and the horizon looms like a vast aqueduct.

Marines ignorant of wine and half-light,
decapitate sirens on seas of lead.
Night, black statue of prudence, holds
the moon's round mirror in her hand.

A desire for form and limit conquers us.
Here comes the man who sees with a yellow ruler.
Venus is a white still life
and the butterfly collectors flee.

Cadaqués, the fulcrum of water and hill,
lifts flights of steps and hides seashells.
Wooden flutes pacify the air.
An old god of the woods gives children fruit.

Her fishermen slumber, dreamless, on sand.
On the deep, a rose serves as their compass.
The ****** horizon of wounded hankerchiefs,
unties the vast crystals of fish and moon.

A hard diadem of white brigantines
wreathes bitter brows and hair of sand.
The sirens convince, but fail to beguile,
and appear if we show a glass of fresh water.

Oh Salvador Dalí, of the olive voice!
I don't praise your imperfect adolescent brush
or your pigments that circle those of your age,
I salute your yearning for bounded eternity.

Healthy soul, you live on fresh marble.
You flee the dark wood of improbable forms.
Your fantasy reaches as far as your hands,
and you savor the sea's sonnet at your window.

The world holds dull half-light and disorder,
in the foreground humanity frequents.
But now the stars, concealing landscapes,
mark out the perfect scheme of their courses.

The flow of time forms pools, gains order,
in the measured forms of age upon age.
And conquered Death, trembling, takes refuge
in the straightended circle of the present moment.

Taking your palette, its wing holds a bullet-hole,
you summon the light that revives the olive-tree.
Broad light of Minverva, builder of scaffolding,
with no room for dream and its inexact flower.

You summon the light that rests on the brow,
not reaching the mouth or the heart of man.
Light feared by the trailing vines of Bacchus,
and the blind force driving the falling water.

You do well to place warning flags
on the dark frontier that shines with night.
As a painter you don't wish your forms softened
by the shifting cotton of unforeseen  clouds.

The fish in its bowl and the bird in its cage.
You refuse to invent them in sea or in air.
You stylize or copy once you have seen,
with your honest eyes, their smal agile bodies.

You love a matter defined and exact,
where the lichen cannot set up its camp.
You love architecture built on the absent,
admitting the banner merely in jest.

The steel compass speaks its short flexible verse.
Now unknown islands deny the sphere.
The straight line speaks of its upward fight
and learned crystals sing their geometry.

Yet the rose too in the garden where you live.
Ever the rose, ever, our north and south!
Calm, intense like an eyeless staute,
blind to the underground struggle it causes.

Pure rose that frees from artifice, sketches,
and opens for us the slight wings of a smile
(Pinned butterfly that muses in flight.)
Rose of pure balance not seeking pain.
Ever the rose!

Oh Salvador Dalí of the olive voice!
I speak of what you and your paintings tell me.
I don't praise your imperfect adolescent brush,
but I sing the firm aim of your arrows.

I sing your sweet battle of Catalan lights,
you love of what might be explained.
I sing your heart astronomical, tender,
a deck of French cards, and never wounded.

I sing longing for statues, sought without rest,
your fear of emotions that wait in the street.
I sing the tiny sea-siren who sings to you
riding a bicycle of corals and conches.

But above all I sing a shared thought
that joins us in the dark and the golden hours.
It is not Art, this light that blinds our eyes.
Rather it is love, friendship, the clashing of swords.

Rather than the picture you patiently trace,
it's the breast of Theresa, she of insomniac skin,
the tight curls of Mathilde the ungrateful,
our friendship a board-game brightly painted.

May the tracks of fingers in blood on gld
stripe the heart of eternal Catalonia.
May stars like fists without falcons shine on you,
while your art and your life burst into flower.

Don't watch the water-clock with membranous wings,
nor the harsh scythe of the allegories.
Forever clothe and bare your brush in the air
before the sea peopled with boats and sailors.

Enrique,
Emilio,
Lorenzo,

the three of them frozen:
Enrique by the world of beds;
Emilio by the world of eyes and wounded hands;
Lorenzo by the world of roofless universities.

Lorenzo,
Emilio,
Enrique,

the three of them burned:
Lorenzo by the world of leaves and billiard *****;
Emilio by the world of blood and white pins;
Enrique by the world of the dead and abandoned newspapers.

Lorenzo,
Emilio,
Enrique,
the three of them buried:
Lorenzo in one of Flora's *******;
Emilio in the dead gin forgotten in the glass;
Enrique in the ant, the sea, and the empty eyes of birds.

Lorenzo,
Emilio,
Enrique,
the three in my hands were
three Chinese mountains,
three shadows of a horse,
three landscapes of snow and a cabin of white lilies
by the pigeon coops where the moon lies flat under the rooster.

One
and one
and one,
the three of them mummified,
with the flies of winter,
with the inkwells the dog ****** and the thistle despises,
with the breeze that freezes theh eart of all the mothers,
by the white ruins of Jupiter where drunks snack on death.

Three
and two
and one,
I saw them disappear, crying and singing
into a hen's egg,
into the night that showed its skeleton of tobacco,
into my sorrow full of faces and piercing bone splinters of moon,
into my happiness of whips and notched wheels,
into my breast troubled by pigeons,
into my deserted death with one mistaken wanderer.

I had killed the fifth moon
and the fans and the applause drank water from the fountains.
Hidden away, the warm milk of newborn girls,
shook the roses with a long white sorrow.
Enrique,
Emilio,
Lorenzo,

Diana is hard,
but somtimes she has ******* of clouds.
The white stone can beat in the blood of a deer
and the deer can dream through the eyes of a horse.

When the pure forms sank
under the cri cri of  daisies
I understood they had murdered me.
They searched the cafés and the graveyards and churches,
they opened the wine casks and wardrobes,
they destroyed three skeletons to pull out their gold teeth.
Still they couldn't fine me.
They couldn't?
No. They couldn't.
But they learned the sixth moon fled against the torrent,
and the sea remembered, suddenly,
the names of all her drowned.

Cordova, far and lonely.

Black pony, full moon,
And olives in my pocket:
Although I know the roads,
I'll never reach Cordova.

For the plain, for the wind,
Black pony, red moon,
And death is watching for me
Beside Cordova's towers.

Alas! the long, long highway,
Alas! my valient pony,
Alas, that death is waiting
Before I reach Cordova.

Cordova, far and lonely.

Córdoba.
Far away, and lonely.

Full moon, black pony,
olives against my saddle.
Though I know all the roadways
i'll never get to Córdoba.

Through the breezes, through the valley,
red moon, black pony.
Death is looking at me
from the towers of Córdoba.

Ay, how long the road is!
Ay, my brave pony!
Ay, death is waiting for me,
before I get to Córdoba.

Córdoba.
Far away, and lonely.

Listen, my son: the silence.
It's a rolling silence,
a silence
where valleys and echoes slip,
and it bends foreheads
down toward the ground.

Dawn in New York has
four columns of mire
and a hurricane of black pigeons
splashing in the putrid waters.

Dawn in New York groans
on enormous fire escapes
searching between the angles
for spikenards of drafted anguish.

Dawn arrives and no one receives it in his mouth
because morning and hope are impossible there:
sometimes the furious swarming coins
penetrate like drills and devour abandoned children.

Those who go out early know in their bones
there will be no paradise or loves that bloom and die:
they know they will be mired in numbers and laws,
in mindless games, in fruitless labors.

The light is buried under chains and noises
in the impudent challenge of rootless science.
And crowds stagger sleeplessly through the boroughs
as if they had just escaped a shipwreck of blood.

Do not carry your remembrance.
Leave it, alone, in my breast,

tremor of a white cherry tree
in the torment of January.

There divides me from the dead
a wall of difficult dreams.

I give the pain of a fresh lily
for a heart of chalk.

All night long, in the orchard
my eyes, like two dogs.

All night long, quinces
of poison, flowing.

Sometimes the wind
is a tulip of fear,

a sick tulip,
daybreak of winter.

A wall of difficult dreams
divides me from the dead.

In the sky there is nobody asleep. Nobody, nobody.
Nobody is asleep.
The creatures of the moon sniff and prowl about their cabins.
The living iguanas will come and bite the men who do not dream,
and the man who rushes out with his spirit broken will meet on the street corner
the unbelievable alligator quiet beneath the tender protest of the stars.

Nobody is asleep on earth. Nobody, nobody.
Nobody is asleep.
In the graveyard far off there is a corpse
who has moaned for three years
because of a dry countryside on his knee;
and that boy they buried this morning cried so much
it was necessary to call out the dogs to keep him quiet.

Life is not a dream. Careful! Careful! Careful!
We fall down the stairs in order to eat the moist earth
or we climb to the knife edge of the snow with the voices of the dead dahlias.
But forgetfulness does not exist, dreams to not exist;
flesh exists. Kisses tie our mouths
in a thicket of new veins,
and whoever his pain pains will feel that pain forever
and whoever is afraid of death will carry it on his shoulers.

On day
the horses will live in the saloons
and the enraged ants
will throw themselves on the yellow skies that take refuge in the eyes of cows.

Another day
we will watch the preserved butterflies rise from the dead
and still walking through a country of gray sponges and silent boats
we will watch our ring flash and roses spring from our tongue.
Careful! Be careful! Be careful!
The men who still have marks of the  claw and the thunderstorm,
and that boy who cries because he has never heard of the invention of the bridge,
or that dead man who possess now only his head and a shoe,
we must carry them to the wall where the iguanas and the snakes are waiting,
where the bear's teeth are waiting,
where the mummified hand of the boy is waiting,
and the hair of the camel stands on end with a violent blue shudder.

Nobody is sleeping in the sky. Nobody, nobody.
Nobody is sleeping.
If someone does close his eyes,
a whip, boys, a whip!
Let there be a landscape of open eyes
and bitter wounds on fire.
No one is sleeping in this world. No one, no one.
I have said it before.

No one is sleeping.
But if someone grows too much moss on his temples during the night,
open the stage trapdoors so he can see in the moonlight
the lying goblets, and the poison, and the skull of the theatres.

No one understood the perfume
of the dark magnolia of your womb
Nobody knew that you tormented
a hummingbird of love between your teeth.

A thousand Persian little horses fell asleep
in the plaza with moon of your forehead,
while through four nights I embraced
your waist, enemy of the snow.

Between plaster and jasmins, your glance
was a pale branch of seeds.
I sought in my heart to give you
the ivory letters that say "siempre",

"Siempre", "siempre": garden of my agony,
your body elusive always,
that blood of your veins in my mouth,
your mouth already lightless for my  death.

By the East River and the Bronx
boys sang, stripped to the waist,
along with the wheels, oil, leather and hammers.
Ninety thousand miners working silver from rock
and the children drawing stairways and perspectives.

But none of them slumbered,
none of them wished to be river,
none loved the vast leaves,
none the blue tongue of the shore.

By East River and the Queensboro
boys battled with Industry,
and Jews sold the river faun
the rose of circumcision
and the sky poured, through bridges and rooftops,
herds of bison driven by the wind.

But none would stop,
none of them longed to be cloud,
none searched for ferns
or the tambourine's yellow circuit.

When the moon sails out
pulleys will turn to trouble the sky;
a boundary of needles will fence in memory
and coffins will carry off those who don't work.

New York of mud,
New York of wire and death.
What angel lies hidden in your cheek?
What perfect voice will speak the truth of wheat?
Who the terrible dream of your stained anemones?

Not for a single moment, Walt Whitman, lovely old man,
have I ceased to see your beard filled with butterflies,
nor your corduroy shoulders frayed by the moon,
nor your thighs of ****** Apollo,
nor your voice like a column of ash;
ancient beautiful as the mist,
who moaned as a bird does
its *** pierced by a nedle.
Enemy of the satyr,
enemy of the vine
and lover of the body under rough cloth.

Not for a single moment, virile beauty
who in mountains of coal, billboards, railroads,
dreamed of being a river of slumbering like a river
with that comrade who would set in your breast
the small grief of an ignorant leopard.

Not for a single moment, Adam of blood, Male,
man alone on the sea, Walt Whitman, lovely old man,
because on penthouse roofs,
and gathered together in bars,
emerging in squads from the sewers,
trembling between the legs of chauffeurs
or spinning on dance-floors of absinthe,
the maricas, Walt Whitman, point to you.

Him too! He's one! And they hurl themselves
at your beard luminous and chaste,
blonds from the north, blacks from the sands,
multitudes with howls and gestures,
like cats and like snakes
the maricas, Walt Whitman, maricas,
disordered with tears, flesh for the whip,
for the boot, or the tamer's bite.

Him too! He's one! Stained fingers
point to the shore of your dream,
when a friend eats your apple,
with its slight tang of petrol,
and the sun sings in the navels
of the boys at play beneath bridges.

But you never sough scratched eyes,
nor the darkest swamp where they drown the children,
nor the frozen saliva,
nor the curved wounds like a toad's belly
that maricas bear, in cars and on terraces,
while the moon whips them on terror's street-corners.

You sought a nakedness like a river.
Bull and dream taht would join the wheel to the seaweed,
father of  your agony, camellia of your death,
and moan in the flames of your hidden equator.

For it's right that a man not seek his delight
in the ****** jungle of approaching morning.
The sky has shores where life is avoided
and bodies that should not be echoed by dawn.

Agony, agony, dream, ferment and dream.
This is the world, my friend, agony, agony.
Bodies dissolve beneath city clocks,
war passes weeping with a million grey rats,
the rich give their darlings
little bright dying things,
and life is not noble, or sarcred, or good.

Man can, if he wishes, lead his desire
through a vein of coral or a heavenly ****.
Tomorrow loves will be stones and Time
a breeze that comes slumbering through the branches.

That's why I don't raise my voice, old Walt Whitman,
against the boy who inscribes
the name of a ******* his pillow,
nor the lad who dresses as a bride
in the shadow of the wardrobe,
nor the solitary men in clubs
who drink with disgust prostitution's waters,
nor against the men with the green glance
who love men and burn their lips in silence.
But yes, against you, city maricas,
of tumescent flesh and unclean thought.
Mothers of mud. Harpies. Unsleeping enemies
of Love  that bestows garlands of joy.

Against you forever, you who give boys
drops of foul death with bitter poison.
Against you forever,
Fairies of North America,
Párajos of Havana,
Jotos of Mexico,
Sarasas of Cádiz,
Apios of Seville,
Cancos of Madrid,
Floras of Alicante,
Adelaidas of Portugal.

Maricas of all the world, muderers of doves!
Slaves to women. Their boudoir *******.
Spread in public squares like fevered fans
or ambushed in stiff landscapes of hemlock.

No quarter! Death
flows from your eyes
and heaps grey flowers at the swamp's edge.
No quarter! Look out!!
Let the perplexed, the pure,
the classical, noted, the supplicants
close the gates of the bacchanal to you.

And you, lovely Walt Whitman, sleep on the banks of the Hudson
with your beard towards the pole and your hands open.
Bland clay or snow, your tongue is calling
for comrades to guard your disembodied gazelle.

Sleep: nothing remains.
A dance of walls stirs the praries
and America drown itself in machines and lament.
I long for a fierce wind that from deepest night
shall blow the flowers and letters from the vault where you sleep
and a ***** boy to tell the whites and their gold
that the kingdom of wheat has arrived.

The weeping
of the guitar begins.
Wineglasses shatter
in the dead of night.
The weeping
of the guitar begins.
It's useless
to hush it.
It's impossible
to hush it.
It weeps on monotonously
the way water weeps,
the way wind weeps
over the snowdrifts.
It's impossible
to hush it.
It weeps for things
far, far away.
For the sand of the hot South
that begs for white camellias.
Weeps for arrows without targets,
an afternoon without a morning,
and for the first dead bird
upon the branch.
Oh, guitar!
Heart gravely wounded
by five swords.

Murdered by the sky.
Among the forms that move toward the snake
and the forms searching for crystal
I will let my hair grow.

With the limbless tree that cannot sing
and the boy with the white egg face.

With the broken-headed animals
and the ragged water of dry feet.

With all that is tired, deaf-mute,
and a butterfly drowned in an inkwell.

Stubmling onto my face, different every day.
Murdered by the sky!

When the moon sails out
the bells fade into stillness
and there emerge the pathways
tha tcan't be penetrated.

When the moon sails out
the water hides earth's surface,
the heart feels like an island
in the infinite silence.

Nobody eats an orange
under the moon's fullness.
It is correct to eat, then,
green and icy fruit.

When the moon sails out
with a hundred identical faces,
the coins made of silver
sob in your pocket.

They hate the shadow of the bird
over the high water of the white cheek
and the conflict of light and wind
in the salon of the cold snow.

They hate the bodiless arrow,
the precise handkerchief's farewell,
the needle that keeps the pressure and the rose
in the cereal blush of the smile.

They love the blue desert,
the swaying bovine expressions,
the lying moon of the poles,
the water's curved dance at the shore.

With the science of tree trunk and street market
they fill the  clay with luminous nerves
and lewdly skate on waters and sands
tasting the bitter freshness of their millennial spit.

It's through the crackling blue,
blue without worm or a sleeping footprint,
where the ostrich eggs remain eternal
and the dancing rains wander untouched.

It's through the blue without history,
blue of a night without fear of day,
blue where the **** of the wind goes splitting
the sleepwalking camels of the empty clouds.

It's there where the torsos dream under the gluttony of grass.
There the corals soak the ink's despair,
the sleepers erase their profiles under the skein of snails
and the space of the dance remains over the final ashes.

The field
of olive trees
opens and closes
like a fan.
Above the olive grove
there is a sunken sky
and a dark shower
of cold stars.
Bulrush and twilight tremble
at the edge of the river.
The grey air ripples.
The olive trees
are charged
with cries.
A flock
of captive birds,
shaking their very long
tail feathers in the gloom.

(Interlude)

My eyes in 1910
never saw the dead being buried,
or the ashen festival of a man weeping at dawn,
or the heart that trembles cornered like a sea horse.

My eyes in 1910
saw the white wall where girls urinated,
the bull's muzzle, the poisonous mushroom,
and a meaningless moon in the corners
that lit up pieces of dry lemon under the hard black of bottles.

My eyes on the pony's neck,
in the pierced breast of a sleeping Saint Rose,
on the rooftops of love, with whipers and cool hands,
in a garden where the cats ate frogs.

Attic where old dust gathers statues and moss,
boxes keeping the silence of devoured *****
in a place where sleep stumbled onto its reality.
There my small eyes.

Don't ask me anything. I've seen that things
find their void when they search for direction.
There is a sorrow of holes in the unpeopled air
and in my eyes clothed creatures - undenuded!

Yes, your childhood now a fable of fountains.* - Jorge Guillén

Yes, your childhood now a fable of fountains.
The train and the woman filling the sky.
Your shy solitude in the hotels
and your pure mask of another sign.
It is the sea's childhood and your silence
where the wise windows were breaking.
It is your stiff ignorance where
my torso was limited by fire.
I gave you the norm of love, man of Apollo,
the lament of a crazed nightingale,
but, pasture of ruin, you sharpened yourself
for brief, indecisive dreams.
Thought head on, light of yesterday,
indices and signs of what may be.
Your waist of restless sand
follows only trails that never rise.
But without you your warm soul
fails to understand. I must search
the corners of a halted Apollo
that I've used to break the mask you wear.
There, lion, fury of heaven,
I will let you graze on my cheeks;
there, blue horse of my madness,
pulse of nebula and minute hand,
I must search for scorpion stones
and your mother's childhood clothes,
midnight lament and torn cloth
that wiped the moon from the dead man's temple.
Yes, your childhood now a fable of fountains.
Strange soul of the space in my veins,
I must search for you, small and rootless.
Love of always, love of never!
Oh, yes! I want. Love. Let me be.
Don't cover my mouth, you
who search for Saturn's seed in the snow
or castrate animals in the sky,
clinic and jungle of anatomy.
Love, love. Childhood of the sea.
Without you your warm soul fails to understand you.
Love, a doe's flight
through the endless breast of whiteness.
And your childhood, love, and childhood.
The train and the woman filling the sky.
Not you, not I, not air, not leaves.
Yes, your childhood now a fable of fountains.

Every song
is the reamins
of love.

Every light
the remains
of time.
A knot
of time.

And every sign
that remains
of a cry.

The labyrinths
that time creates
vanish.

(Only the desert
remains.)

The heart,
fountain of desire,
vanishes.

(Only the desert
remains.)

The illusion of dawn
and kisses
vanish.

Only the desert
remains.
A rolling
desert.

Through the laurel branches
I saw two doves of darkness.
The one it was the sun,
the other one was lunar.
I said: 'Little neighbours
where is my tombstone?'
'In my tail-feathers,' the sun said.
'In my throat,' said the lunar.
And I who was out walking
with the earth wrapped round me,
saw two eagles made of white snow,
and a girl who was naked.
And the one was the other,
and the girl, she was neither.
I said: 'Little eagles,
where is my tombstone?'
'In my tail-feathers,' the sun said.
'In my throat,' said the lunar.
Through the branches of laurel,
I saw two doves, both naked.
And the one was the other,
and the two of them were neither.

Dry land,
quiet land
of night's
immensity.

(Wind in the olive groves,
wind in the Sierra.)

Ancient
land
of oil lamps
and grief.
Land
of deep cisterns.
Land of death without eyes
and arrows.

(Wind on the roads.
Breeze in the poplar groves.)

Village

Upon a barren hill,
a Calvary.
Clear water
and century-old olive trees.
In the narrow streets,
men hidden under cloaks,
and on the towers
the spinning vanes.
Forever
spinning.
Oh, village lost
in the Andalucia of tears!

Dagger

The dagger
enters the haert
the way plowshares turn over
the wasteland.

No.
Do not cut into me.
No.

Like a ray of sun,
the dagger
ignites terrible
hollows.

No.
Do not cut into me.
No.

Crossroads

East wind,
a street lamp
and a dagger
in the heart.
The street
quivers like
tightly pulled
string,
like a huge, buzzing
horsefly.
Everywhere,
I see a dagger
in the heart.

Ay!

The cry leaves shadows of cypress
upon the wind.

(Leave me here, in this field,
weeping.)

The whole world's broken.
Only silence remains.

(Leave me here, in this field,
weeping).

The darkened horizon's
bitten by bonfires.

(I've told you already to leave me
here, in this field,
weeping.)

Surprise

He lay dead in the street
wit ha dagger in his chest.
Nobody knew who he was.
How the streep lamp flickered!
Mother of god,
how the street lamp
faintly flickered!
It was dawn. Nobody
could look up, wide-eyed,
into the glare.
And he lay dead in the street
with a dagger in his chest,
and nobody knew who he was.

Soleá

Wearing black mantillas,
she thinks the world is tiny
and the heart immense.

Wearing black mantillas.

She thinks that tender sighs
and cries disappear
into currents of wind.

Wearing black mantillas.

The door was left open,
and at dawn the entire sky
emptied onto her balcony.

Ay, yayayayay,
wearing black mantillas.

Cave

From the cave
come endless sobbings.

(Purple
over red.)

The gypsy
calls forth the distance.

(Tall towers
and mysterious men.)

In an unsteady voice
his eyes wander.

(Black
over red.)

And the white-washed cave
trembled in gold.

(White
over red.)

Encounter

For you and I
aren't ready
to find each other.
You... as you well know.
I loved her so much!
Follow the narrowest path.
I have
holes
in my hands
from the nails.
Can't you see how
I'm bleeding to death?
Don't look back,
go slowly,
and pray as I do
to San Cayetano
for you and I
aren't ready
to find each other.

Dawn

Bells of Cordoba
in the early morning.
Bells of Granada
at dawn.
You are felt by all the girls
who weep to the tender,
weeping Solea.
The girls
of upper Andalucia,
and of lower.
You girls of Spain,
with tiny feet
and trembling skirts,
who've filled the crossroads
with crosses.
Oh, bells of Cordoba
in the early morning,
and, oh, the bells of Granada
at dawn!

My heart rests, by the cold fountain.
               (Fill it with threads,
               spider of silence.)

The fountain-water sang it the song.
               (Fill it with threads,
               spider of silence.)

My heart, waking, sang its desires.
               (Spider of nothingness,
               spin your mystery.)

The fountain-water listened sombrely.
              (Spider of nothingness,
               spin your mystery.)

My heart falls into the cold of the fountain.
               (White hands, far-out,
               hold back the water.)

The water carries it, singing with joy.
              (White hands, far-out,
               nothing there in the water!)

The wreath, quick, I am dying!
Weave it quick now! Sing, and moan, sing!
Now the shadow is darkening my throat,
and January's light returns, a thousand and one times.

Between what needs me, and my needing you,
starry air, and a trembling tree.
A thickness of windflowers lifts
a whole year, with hidden groaning.

Take joy from the fresh landscape of my wound,
break out the reeds, and the delicate streams,
and taste the blood, split, on my thighs of sweetness.

But quick! So that joined together, and one,
time will find us ruined,
with bitten souls, and mouths bruised with love.

The rose was
not looking for the morning:
on its branch, almost immortal,
it looked for something other.

The rose was
not looking for wisdom, or for shadow:
the edge of flesh and dreaming,
it looked for something other.

The rose was
not looking for the rose, was
unmoving in the heavens:
it looked for something other.

Woodcutter.
Cut out my shadow.
Free me from the torture
of seeing myself fruitless.

Why was I born among mirrors?
The daylight revolves around me.
And the night herself repeats me
in all her constellations.

I want to live not seeing self.
I shall dream the husks and insects
change inside my dreaming
into my birds and foilage.

Woodcutter.
Cut out my shadow.
Free me from the torture
of seeing myself fruitless.

In the parched path
I have seen the good lizard
(one drop of crocodile)
meditating.
With his green frock-coat
of an abbot of the devil,
his correct bearing
and his stiff collar,
he has the sad air
of an old professor.
Those faded eyes
of a broken artist,
how they watch the afternoon
in dismay!

Is this, my friend,
your twilight constitutional?
Please use your cane,
you are very old, Mr. Lizard,
and the children of the village
may startle you.
What are you seeking in the path,
my near-sighted philosopher,
if the wavering phantasm
of the parched afternoon
has broken the horizon?

Are you seeking the blue alms
of the moribund heaven?
A penny of a star?
Or perhaps
you've been reading a volume
of Lamartine, and you relish
the plasteresque trills
of the birds?

(You watch the setting sun,
and your eyes shine,
oh, dragon of the frogs,
with a human radiance.
Ideas, gondolas without oars,
cross the shadowy
waters of your
burnt-out eyes.)

Have you come looking
for that lovely lady lizard,
green as the wheatfields
of May,
as the long locks
of sleeping pools,
who scorned you, and then
left you in your field?
Oh, sweet idyll, broken
among the sweet sedges!
But, live! What the devil!
I like you.
The motto 'I oppose
the serpent' triumphs
in that grand double chin
of a Christian archbishop.

Now the sun has dissolved
in the cup of the mountains,
and the flocks
cloud the roadway.
It is the hour to depart:
leave the dry path
and your meditations.
You will have time
to look at the stars
when the worms are eating you
at their leisure.

Go home to your house
by the village, of the crickets!
Good night, my friend
Mr. Lizard!

Now the field is empty,
the mountains dim,
the roadway deserted.
Only, now and again,
a cuckoo sings in the darkness
of the poplar trees.

Night approached us, with a full moon.
I began to cry, and you to laugh.
Your contempt was a god, and my whinings,
a chain of doves and minutes.

Night left us. Crystal of pain
you wept for distant depths.
My sadness was a cluster of agonies,
over your fragile heart of sand.

Morning joined us on the bed,
our mouths placed over the frozen jet
of a blood, without end, that was shed.

And the sun shone through the closed balcony,
and the coral of life opened its branch,
over my shrouded heart.

"Our cattle graze, the wind breathes." -Garcilaso *

It was my ancient voice
ignorant of thick bitter juices.
I sense it lapping my feet
beneath the fragile wet ferns.

Ay, ancient voice of my love,
ay, voice of my truth,
ay, voice of my open flank,
when all the roses flowed from my tongue
and grass knew nothing of horses' impassive teeth!

Here are you drinking my blood,
drinking my tedious childhood mood,
while in the wind my eyes are bludgeoned
by aluminum and drunken voices.

Let me pass the gates
where Eve eats ants
and Adam seeds dazzled fish.
Let me return, manikins with horns,
to the grove where I stretch
and leap with joy.

I know a rite so secret
it requires an old rusty pin
and I know the horror of open eyes
on a plate's concrete surface.

But I want neither world nor dream, nor divine voice,
I want my freedom, my human love
in the darkest corner of breeze that no oen wants.
My human love!

Those hounds of the sea chase each other
and the wind spies on careless tree trunks.
Oh ancient voice, burn with your tongue
this voice of tin and talc!

I long to weep because I want to,
as the children cry in the last row,
because I'm not man, nor poet, nor leaf,
but only a wounded pulse circling the things of the other side

I want to cry out speaking my name,
rose, child and fir-tree beside this lake,
to speak my truth as a man of blood
slay in myself teh tricks and turns of the word.

No, no. I'm not asking, I, desire,
voice, my freedom that laps my hands.
In the labyrinth of screens it's my nakedness receives
the moon of punishment and the ash-drowned clock.

Thus I was speaking.
Thus I was speaking with Saturn stopped the trains,
when the fod and Dream and Death were seeking me.
Seeking me
where the cows, with tiny pages' feet, bellow
and where my body floats between opposing fulcrums.

The Guadalquivir river
Flows between orange and olive.
Two rivers of Granada
Come down from snow to wheat field.

Ah, Love, the unreturning!

The ellipse of a cry
travels from mountain
to mountain.

From the olive trees
it appears as a black
rainbow upon the blue night.

Ay!

Like the bow of a viola
the cry has made the long
strings of the wind vibrate.

Ay!

(The folks from the caves
stick out their oil lamps.)

Ay!

I. Cogida and death

At five in the afternoon.
It was exactly five in the afternoon.
A boy brought the white sheet
at five in the afternoon.
A frail of lime ready prepared
at five in the afternoon.
The rest was death, and death alone.

The wind carried away the cottonwool
at five in the afternoon.
And the oxide scattered crystal and nickel
at five in the afternoon.
Now the dove and the leopard wrestle
at five in the afternoon.
And a thigh with a desolated horn
at five in the afternoon.
The bass-string struck up
at five in the afternoon.
Arsenic bells and smoke
at five in the afternoon.
Groups of silence in the corners
at five in the afternoon.
And the bull alone with a high heart!
At five in the afternoon.
When the sweat of snow was coming
at five in the afternoon,
when the bull ring was covered with iodine
at five in the afternoon.
Death laid eggs in the wound
at five in the afternoon.
At five in the afternoon
At five o'clock in the afternoon.

A coffin on wheels is his bed
at five in the afternoon.
Bones and flutes resound in his ears
at five in the afternoon.
Now the bull was bellowing through his forehead
at five in the afternoon.
The room was iridiscent with agony
at five in the afternoon.
In the distance the gangrene now comes
at five in the afternoon.
Horn of the lily through green groins
at five in the afternoon.
The wounds were burning like suns
at five in the afternoon.
At five in the afternoon.
Ah, that fatal five in the afternoon!
It was five by all the clocks!
It was five in the shade of the afternoon!

II. The Spilled Blood

I will not see it!

Tell the moon to come,
for I do not want to see the blood
of Ignacio on the sand.

I will not see it!

The moon wide open.
Horse of still clouds,
and the grey bull ring of dreams
with willows in the barreras.

I will not see it!

Let my memory kindle!
Warm the jasmines
of such minute whiteness!

I will not see it!

The cow of the ancient world
passend har sad tongue
over a snout of blood
spilled on the sand,
and the bulls of Guisando,
partly death and partly stone,
bellowed like two centuries
sated with threading the earth.
No.
I will not see it!

Ignacio goes up the tiers
with all his death on his shoulders.
He sought for the dawn
but the dawn was no more.
He seeks for his confident profile
and the dream bewilders him.
He sought for his beautiful body
and encountered his opened blood.
Do not ask me to see it!
I do not want to hear it spurt
each time with less strength:
that spurt that illuminates
the tiers of seats, and spills
over the cordury and the leather
of a thirsty multitude.
Who shouts that I should come near!
Do not ask me to see it!

His eyes did not close
when he saw the horns near,
but the terrible mothers
lifted their heads.
And across the ranches,
an air of secret voices rose,
shouting to celestial bulls,
herdsmen of pale mist.
There was no prince in Sevilla
who could compare to him,
nor sword like his sword
nor heart so true.
Like a river of lions
was his marvellous strength,
and like a marble toroso
his firm drawn moderation.
The air of Andalusian Rome
gilded his head
where his smile was a spikenard
of wit and intelligence.
What a great torero in the ring!
What a good peasant in the sierra!
How gentle with the sheaves!
How hard with the spurs!
How tender with the dew!
How dazzling the fiesta!
How tremendous with the final
banderillas of darkness!

But now he sleeps without end.
Now the moss and the grass
open with sure fingers
the flower of his skull.
And now his blood comes out singing;
singing along marshes and meadows,
sliden on frozen horns,
faltering soulles in the mist
stoumbling over a thousand hoofs
like a long, dark, sad tongue,
to form a pool of agony
close to the starry Guadalquivir.
Oh, white wall of Spain!
Oh, black bull of sorrow!
Oh, hard blood of Ignacio!
Oh, nightingale of his veins!
No.
I will not see it!
No challice can contain it,no swallows can drink it,
no frost of light can cool it,
nor song nor deluge og white lilies,
no glass can cover mit with silver.
No.
I will not see it!

III. The Laid Out Body

Stone is a forehead where dreames grieve
without curving waters and frozen cyprseses.
Stone is a shoulder on which to bear Time
with trees formed of tears and ribbons and planets.

I have seen grey showers move towards the waves
raising their tender riddle arms,
to avoid being caught by lying stone
which loosens their limbs without soaking their blood.

For stone fathers seed and clouds,
skeleton larks and wolves of penumbra:
but yields not sounds nor crystals nor fire,
only bull rings and bull rings and more bull rings without walls.

Now, Ignacio the well born lies on the stone.
All is finished. What is happening! Contemplate his face:
death was covered him with pale sulphur
and his place on him the head of dark minotaur.

All is finshed. The rain penetrates his mouth.
The air, as if mad, leaves his sunken chest,
and Love, soaked through with tears of snow,
warms itself on the peak of the herd.

What is they saying? A stenching silence settles down.
We are here with a body laid out which fades away.
with a pure shape which had nightingales
and we see it being filled with depthless holes.

Who creases the shroud? What he says is not true!
Nobody sings here, nobody weeps in the corner,
nobody ****** the spurs, not terrifies the serpent.
Here I want nothing else but the round eyes
to see his body without a chance of rest.

Here I want to see those men of hard voice.
Those that break horses and dominate rivers;
those men of sonorous skeleton who sing
with a mouth full of sun and flint.

Here I want to see them. Before the stone.
Before this body with broken reins.
I want to know from them the way out
for this captain stripped down by death.

I want them to show me a lament like a river
which will have sweet mists and deep shores,
to take the body of Ignacio where it looses itself
without hearing the double planting of the bulls.

Loses itself in the round bull ring of the moon
which feigns in its youth a sad quiet bull,
loses itself in the night without song of fishes
and in the white thicket of frozen smoke.

I don't want to cover his face with hankerchiefs
that he may get used to the death he carries.
Go, Ignacio, feel not the hot bellowing
Sleep, fly, rest: even the sea dies!

IV:

The bull does not know you, nor the fig tree,
nor the horses, nor the ants in your own house.
The child and the afternoon do not know you
because you have died forever.

The shoulder of the stone does not know you
nor the black silk, where you are shuttered.
Your silent memory does not know you
because you have died forever.

The autumn will come with small whiet snails,
misty grapes and clustered hills,
but no one will look into your eyes
becuaase you have died forever.

Because you have died froever,
like al lthe dead of the earth,
like all the dead who are forgotten
in a heap of lifeless dogs.

Nobody knows you. No, but I sing of you.
For posterity I sing of your profile and grace.
Of the signal maturity of your understanding.
Of your appetite for death and the taste of its mouth:
of the sadness of your once valiant gaiety.

It will be a long time, if ever, before there is born
an Andalusian so true, so rich in adventure.
I sing of his elegance with words that groan,
and I remember a sad breeze through the olive trees.

Si muero
Dejad el balcón abierto

El niño come naranjas
(Desde mi balcón lo veo)

El segador siega el trigo
(Desde mi balcón lo siento)

Si muero
Dejad el balcón abierto.

Through the indecisive
branches
went a girl
who was life.
Through the indecisive
branches.
She reflected daylight,
with a tiny mirror,
which was the splendour,
of her unclouded forehead.
Through the indecisive
branches.
In the dark of night,
lost, she wandered,
weeping the dew,
of this imprisoned time.
Through the indecisive
branches.

The sea
smiles far-off.
Spume-teeth,
sky-lips.

'What do you sell, troubled child,
child with naked *******?'

'Sir, I sell
salt-waters of the sea.'

'What do you carry, dark child,
mingled with your blood?'

'Sir, I carry
salt-waters of the sea.'

'These tears of brine
where do they come from, mother?'

'Sir, I cry
salt-waters of the sea.'

'Heart, this deep bitterness,
where does it rise from?'

'So bitter, the salt-waters
of the sea!'

The sea
smiles far-off.
Spume-teeth.
Sky-lips.

I've closed my balcony
for I don't want to hear the weeping,
yet out beyond the grey walls
nothing is heard but weeping.

There are very few angels singing
there are very few dogs barking,
a thousand violins fit in the palm of my hand.

But the weeping's a dog, immense,
the weeping's an angel, immense,
the weepin's a violin, immense
the tears have silenced the wind,
and nothing is heard but weeping.

Just your hot heart,
nothing more.

My Paradise, a field,
no nightingales,
no strings,
a river, discrete,
and a little fountain.

Without the spurs,
of the wind, in the branches,
without the star,
that wants to be a leaf.

An enormous light
that will be
the flow
of the Other,
in a field of broken gazes.

A still calm
where our kisses,
sonorous circles
of echoes,
will open, far-off.

And your hot heart,
nothing more.

In Vienna there are ten little girls,
a shoulder for death to cry on,
and a forest of dried pigeons.
There is a fragment of tomorrow
in the museum of winter frost.
There is a thousand-windowed dance hall.

Ay, ay, ay, ay!
Take this close-mouthed waltz.

Little waltz, little waltz, little waltz,
of itself of death, and of brandy
that dips its tail in the sea.

I love you, I love you, I love you,
with the armchair and the book of death,
down the melancholy hallway,
in the iris' darkened garret.

Ay, ay, ay, ay!
Take this broken-waisted waltz.

In Vienna there are four mirrors
in which your mouth and the echoes play.
There is a death for piano
that paints little boys blue.
There are beggars on the roof.
There are fresh garlands of tears.

Ay, ay, ay, ay!
Take this waltz that dies in my arms.

Because I love you, I love you, my love,
in the attic wherethe children play,
dreaming ancient lights of Hungary
through the noise, the balmy afternoon,
seeing sheep and irises of snow
through teh dark silence of your forehead.

Ay, ay, ay, ay!
Take this "I will always love you" waltz.

In Vienna I will dance with you
in a costume with
a river's head.
See how the hyacinths line my banks!
I will leave my mouth between your legs,
my soul in photographs and lilies,
and in the dark wake of your footsteps,
my love, my love, I will have to leave
violin and grave, the waltzing ribbons.

Singing of children
in the night silence:
Light of the stream, and
calm of the fountain!

THE CHILDREN

What does you heard hold,
divine in its gladness?

MYSELF

A peal from the belltower,
lost in the dimness.

THE CHILDREN

You leave us singing
in the small plaza.
Light of the steram,
and calm of the fountain!

What do you hold in
your hands of sprintime?

MYSELF

A rose of blood, and
a lily of whiteness.

THE CHILDREN

Dip them in water
of the song of the ages.
Light of the stream,
and calm of the fountain!

What does your tongue feel,
scarlet and thirsting?

MYSELF

A taste of the bones
of my giant forehead.

THE CHILDREN

Drink the still water
of the song of the ages.
Light of the stream,
and calm of the fountain!

Why do you roam far
from the small plaza?

MYSELF

I go to find Mages
and find princesses.

THE CHILDREN

Who showed you the road there,
the road of the poets?

MYSELF

The fount and the stream of
the song of the ages.

THE CHILDREN

Do you go far from
the aerth and the ocean?

MYSELF

It's filled with light, is
my heart of silk, and
with bells that are lost,
with bees and with liles,
and I will go far off,
behind those hills there,
close to the starlight,
to ask of the Christ there
Lord, to return me
my child's oul, ancient,
ripened with legends,
with a cap of feathers,
and a sword of wood.

THE CHILDREN

You leave us singing
in the small plaza.
Light of the stream, and
calm of the fountain!

Enormous pupils
of the parched palm fronds
hurt by the wind, they
weep their dead leaves.

The moon came into the forge
in her bustle of flowering nard.
The little boy stares at her, stares.
The boy is starting hard.
In the shaken air
the moon moves her arms,
and shows lubricious and pure,
her ******* of hard tin.
"Moon, moon, moon, run!
If the gypsies come,
they will use your heart
to make white necklaces and rings."
"Let me dance, my little one.
When the gypsies come,
they'll find you on the anvil
with your lively eyes closed tight."
"Moon, moon, moon, run!
I can feelheir horses come."
"Let me by, my little one,
don't step on me, all starched and white!"

Closer comes the horseman,
drumming on the plain.
The boy is in the forge;
his eyes are closed.
Through the olive grove
comes the gypsies, dream and bronze,
their heads held high,
their hooded eyes.

Oh, how the night owl calls,
calling, calling from its tree!
The moon is climbing through the sky
with the child by the hand.

They are crying in the forge,
all the gypsies, shouting, crying.
The air is viewing all, views all.
The air is at the viewing.

The night is coming.

The moonlight strikes
on evening's anvil.

The night is coming.

A giant tree clothes itself
in the leaves of cantos.

The night is coming.

If you came to see me,
on the path of storm-winds...

The night is coming.

...you would find me crying,
under high, black poplars.
Ay, girl with the dark hair!
Under high, black poplars.

GRANDMOTHER
A singing, child, a singing
about the great stallion,
who would not drink the water,
the water in its blackness,
in among the branches.
Where it finds the bridge,
it hands there, singing.
Who knows what water is,
my child,
its tail waving,
through the dark green chambers?

MOTHER
Sleep, my flower,
the stallion is not drinking.

GRANDMOTHER
Sleep, my rose,
the stallion is crying.
His legs are wounded,
his mane is frozen,
in his eyes,
there is a blade of silver.
They went to the river.
Ay, how they went!
Blood running,
quicker than water.

MOTHER
Sleep, my flower,
the stallion is not drinking.

GRANDMOTHER
Sleep, my rose,
the stallion is crying.

MOTHER
It would not touch
the wet shore,
his burning muzzle,
silvered with flies.
He would only neigh,
to the harsh mountains,
a weight of river, dead,
against his throat.
Ay, proud stallion
that would not drink the water!
Ay, pain of snowfall,
stallion of daybreak!

GRANDMOTHER
Do not come here! Wait,
close the window,
with branches of dream,
and dreams of branches.

MOTHER
My child is sleeping.

GRANDMOTHER
My child is silent.

MOTHER
Stallion, my child
has a soft pillow.

GRANDMOTHER
Steel for his cradle.

MOTHER
Lace for his covers.

GRANDMOTHER
A singing, child, a singing.

MOTHER
Ay, pround stallion
that would not drink the water!

GRANDMOTHER
Don't come here! Don't enter!
Go up to the mountain
through a sombre valley,
to where the wild mare is.

MOTHER* *gazing
My child is sleeping.

GRANDMOTHER
My child is resting.

MOTHER (softly)
Sleep, my flower,
the stallion is not drinking.

GRANDMOTHER (rising, and very softly)
Sleep, my rose,
the stallion is crying.

Peaceful waters of the air
under echo's branches

peaceful waters of a pool
under a bough laden with stars

peaceful waters of your mouth
under a forest of kisses.

The golden girl
bathed in the water,
and the water turned to gold.

The weeds and branches
in shadow surprised her,
and the nightingale sang
for the white girl.

And the bright night came,
clouded dark silver,
with barren mountains
in the umber breeze.

The wet girl
was white in the water
and the water, blushed.

The dawn came without stain,
with its thousand bovine faces,
stiff and shrouded there
with frosty garlands.

The girl of tears
bathed among tears,
and the nightingale wept
with burning wings.

The golden girl
was a white heron
and the water turned her gold.

What effort!
What effort the horse makes
To be a dog!
What effort the dog to become a swallow!
What effort the swallow to be a bee!
What effort the bee to become a horse!
And the horse,
what a sharp shaft it steals from the rose!
what grey rosiness lifts from its lips!
And the rose,
what a flock of lights and cries
caught in the living sap of its stem!
And the sap,
what thorns it dreams in its vigil!
And the tiny daggers
what moon, and no stable, what nakedness,
skin eternal and reddened, they go seeking!
And I, in the eaves,
what a burning seraph I seek and am!
But the arch of plaster,
how vast, invisible, how minute,
without effort!

Sobre el monte pelado
un calvario.
Agua clara
y olivos centenarios.
Por las callejas
hombres embozados,
y en las torres
veletas girando.
Eternamente
girando.
¡Oh pueblo perdido,
en la Andalucía del llanto!

Throught the trees of Tamarit
have come the hounds of lead
waiting for the branches to fall,
waiting till they shatter themselves.

Tamarit has an apple tree
with an apple on it that sobs.
A nightingale gathers the sighs
and a pheasant leads them off through the dust.

But the branches are happiness,
the branches are like us.
They don't think of rain, they sleep,
as if they were trees, just like that.

Sitting, their knees in water,
two valleys awaited the Fall.
The twilight with elephantine step
leant against trunks and branches.

Through the trees of Tamarit
are many children with veiled faces
waiting for my branches to fall,
waiting till they shatter themselves.

I know that my profile will be serene
in the nroth of an unreflecting sky.
Mercury of vigil, chaste mirror
to break the pulse of my style.

For if ivy and the cool of linen
are the norm of the body I leave behind,
my profile in the sand will be the old
unblushing silence of a crocodile.

And though my tongue of frozen doves
will never taste of flame,
only of empty broom.

I'll be a free sign of oppressed norms
on the neck of the stiff branch
and in teh ache of dahlias without end.

Verde que te quiero verde.
Verde viento. Verdes ramas.
El barco sobre la mar
y el caballo en la montaña.
Con la sombra en la cintura
ella sueña en su baranda,
verde carne, pelo verde,
con ojos de fría plata.
Verde que te quiero verde.
Bajo la luna gitana,
las cosas le están mirando
y ella no puede mirarlas.
Verde que te quiero verde.
Grandes estrellas de escarcha,
vienen con el pez de sombra
que abre el camino del alba.
La higuera frota su viento
con la lija de sus ramas,
y el monte, gato garduño,
eriza sus pitas agrias.
¿Pero quién vendrá? ¿Y por dónde...?
Ella sigue en su baranda,
verde carne, pelo verde,
soñando en la mar amarga.Compadre, quiero cambiar
mi caballo por su casa,
mi montura por su espejo,
mi cuchillo por su manta.
Compadre, vengo sangrando,
desde los montes de Cabra.
Si yo pudiera, mocito,
ese trato se cerraba.
Pero yo ya no soy yo,
ni mi casa es ya mi casa.
Compadre, quiero morir
decentemente en mi cama.
De acero, si puede ser,
con las sábanas de holanda.
¿No ves la herida que tengo
desde el pecho a la garganta?
Trescientas rosas morenas
lleva tu pechera blanca.
Tu sangre rezuma y huele
alrededor de tu faja.
Pero yo ya no soy yo,
ni mi casa es ya mi casa.
Dejadme subir al menos
hasta las altas barandas,
dejadme subir, dejadme,
hasta las verdes barandas.
Barandales de la luna
por donde retumba el agua.Ya suben los dos compadres
hacia las altas barandas.
Dejando un rastro de sangre.
Dejando un rastro de lágrimas.
Temblaban en los tejados
farolillos de hojalata.
Mil panderos de cristal,
herían la madrugada.Verde que te quiero verde,
verde viento, verdes ramas.
Los dos compadres subieron.
El largo viento, dejaba
en la boca un raro gusto
de hiel, de menta y de albahaca.
¡Compadre! ¿Dónde está, dime?
¿Dónde está mi niña amarga?
¡Cuántas veces te esperó!
¡Cuántas veces te esperara,
cara fresca, ***** pelo,
en esta verde baranda!Sobre el rostro del aljibe
se mecía la gitana.
Verde carne, pelo verde,
con ojos de fría plata.
Un carámbano de luna
la sostiene sobre el agua.
La noche su puso íntima
como una pequeña plaza.
Guardias civiles borrachos,
en la puerta golpeaban.
Verde que te quiero verde.
Verde viento. Verdes ramas.
El barco sobre la mar.
Y el caballo en la montaña.

Y que yo me la llevé al río
creyendo que era mozuela,
pero tenía marido.Fue la noche de Santiago
y casi por compromiso.
Se apagaron los faroles
y se encendieron los grillos.
En las últimas esquinas
toqué sus pechos dormidos,
y se me abrieron de pronto
como ramos de jacintos.
El almidón de su enagua
me sonaba en el oído,
como una pieza de seda
rasgada por diez cuchillos.
Sin luz de plata en sus copas
los árboles han crecido,
y un horizonte de perros
ladra muy lejos del río.Pasadas las zarzamoras,
los juncos y los espinos,
bajo su mata de pelo
hice un hoyo sobre el limo.
Yo me quité la corbata.
Ella se quitó el vestido.
Yo el cinturón con revólver.
Ella sus cuatro corpiños.
Ni nardos ni caracolas
tienen el cutis tan fino,
ni los cristales con luna
relumbran con ese brillo.
Sus muslos se me escapaban
como peces sorprendidos,
la mitad llenos de lumbre,
la mitad llenos de frío.
Aquella noche corrí
el mejor de los caminos,
montado en potra de nácar
sin bridas y sin estribos.
No quiero decir, por hombre,
las cosas que ella me dijo.
La luz del entendimiento
me hace ser muy comedido.
Sucia de besos y arena
yo me la llevé del río.
Con el aire se batían
las espadas de los lirios.Me porté como quien soy.
Como un gitano legítimo.
Le regalé un costurero
grande de raso pajizo,
y no quise enamorarme
porque teniendo marido
me dijo que era mozuela
cuando la llevaba al río.