stonepicnicking_okapi

I read, then skimmed Poet in New York a bilingual collection of Frederico Garcia Lorca's poems. I started reading about him after looking up a lecture he gave in Buenos Aires defining the artistic concept of duende. But turns out, I don't like Lorcas as much as I thought I did. My favorite part was actually the first page, with a photo of his passport. And below the poem I liked most, Brooklyn Bridge Nocturne.



Sleepless City
(Brooklyn Bridge Nocturne) by Frederico Garcia Lorca. [trans. by Greg Simon and Steven F. White. Original in Spanish available here.]

Out in the sky, no one sleeps. No one, no one.
No one sleeps.
Lunar creatures sniff and circle the dwellings.
Live iguanas will come to bite the men who don’t dream,
and the brokenhearted fugitive will meet on street corners
an incredible crocodile resting beneath the tender protest of the stars.

Out in the world, no one sleeps. No one, no one.
No one sleeps.
There is a corpse in the farthest graveyard
complaining for three years
because of an arid landscape in his knee;
and a boy who was buried this morning cried so much
they had to call the dogs to quiet him.
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