G is for Garcia Lorca

Federico Garcia Lorca.

One of my favourite Spanish poets.  I say that as if my knowledge of Spanish poets is broad - but it's not!

Lorca lived in my favourite city in Spain, Granada.  On my first trip to Europe, I enrolled in a Spanish school based in Granada, at the foot of the Sierra Nevada for a couple of months.  I never wanted to leave.

La Huerta de San Vicente, Lorca's Summer house and now museum, is situated in el Parque Federico Garcia Lorca in Granada.  It's surrounded by vast gardens that are accompanied by the soundtrack of running water, providing a cooling effect in the dry Summer heat.

I would spend my afternoons sitting on the park bench in the photo above, in Lorca's courtyard, practicing my Spanish and doing my homework.  It made me feel close to his spirit and connected to Spain in some way.  My great uncle James, a proud Scotsman, died in the Spanish Civil War, fighting against Franco's regime.

On August 19th, 1936, during the Spanish Civil War, Lorca was shot and killed after being arrested three days prior.  Some say he was murdered for his political views and the voice he had as a part of the Generation of '27.  His remains have never been found.

This is one of my favourite Lorca poems.  It's only the first part, about the gouging of a bullfighter, Ignacio Sanchez Mejias, by the bull.  He subsequently died.

Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias

1. 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!