Presence of the Body F. G. Lorca - translation

Dark stone is a forehead where dreams play a mime,
its curves keep no water or stiff-frozen pines.
Dark stone is a shoulder to lift and hold time,
with ribbons and planets and tears on vines.
 
I’ve seen many rains attacking in waves,
the rains that lifted fragile, wrinkled hands
and poured on stone of the bull-ring enclaves,
and washed off the blood, blood that runs into sands.

The stone gathers seedlings and clouds of gloom,
dead larks, wolves of shadows and shadowy moles
but gives back no sound, no crystal, no fume,
gives bull-rings and bull-rings, the rings with no walls.

Ignacio, noble, lies here on a stone,
destroyed and diminished. Just look at his figure!
Death wrapped him in sulphur and gave, to atone,
a Minotaur’s head and the bounds of rigor.

Destroyed. Brutal rain penetrates through his mouth
and air is rushing from his sunken chest,
and Love, wet and frozen, forsaken and drowsed
moves up to the highlands with herds to get blessed.   

What is to be said? Stinking silence pervades,
the body is fading between outlines
and sad nightingales escape from its crates,
deep holes are being cut in the ruined confines.
 
Who’s crumpling the shroud? The words are so false,
here no one is singing or quietly weeping
and no one spurs horses, jolts snakes, no one strolls,
here all that I want are the truthful eyeballs
to see that this body is restless in sleeping.

I want to see here harsh men and hard grievers,
whose bones know the straining, know rain and wind,
the tamers of horses, subduers of rivers,
with songs of sunlight and the toughness of flint.

I want them be here, to stay at this stone,
to stay by this body, to hear the Mass,
I want them to tell me how could he be gone,
the bravest of captains attended by death.

I’d ask them to teach me to weep like a river,
that flows with the clouds, soft, foggy and cool,
that may take Ignacio’s flesh and deliver
the body to sea, cut the snorts of the bull.

Take him to the round bull-ring of moonlight.
Take him to the moon, a green bull swelled with pain.
Take him to the quietest, songless midnight,
and hide him in smoke, and just let him remain.