Spanish poet & playwright (1898-1936)
We're all like the little sailor. From the harbors we hear the strains of accordions and the murky soapy noises of the docks, from the mountains we receive the dish of silence that the shepherds eat, but we don't hear more than our own distances. And what distances without end and without doors and without mountains!
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
letter to Jose Maria Chacon y Calvo, 1920s
What you wouldn't have suspected
lives & trembles in the air.
Those treasures of the day
you keep just out of reach.
These come & go in truckloads
but no one stops to see them.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
"Song of the Motionless Gardener"
I'll always be happy if they'd leave me alone in that delightful and unknown furthest corner, apart from struggles, putrefactions and nonsense; the ultimate corner of sugar and toast, where the mermaids catch the branches of the willows and the heart opens to a flute's sharpness.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
letter to Melchor Fernandez Almagro, autumn 1924
There's no doubt that I really have a feeling for the theater. These past few days it has occurred to me to do a comedy whose chief characters are photographic enlargements. Those people we see in doorways. Newlyweds, sergeants, dead girls, an anonymous crowd full of mustaches and wrinkles. It should be terrible. If I focus it well, it will possess pathos without consolation. In the midst of those people I will place an authentic fairy.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
letter to Melchor Fernandez Almagro, February/March 1926
The moon carries the masks of meningitis into bedrooms, fills the wombs of pregnant women with cold water and, as soon as I'm not careful, throws handfuls of grass on my shoulders.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
The Public
What matters most has an ultimate metallic quality of death. The chasuble and the wagon wheel, the razor and the prickly beards of shepherds, the bare moon, a fly, humid cupboards, rubble piles, the images of saints covered in lace, quicklime, and the wounding edges of the rooflines and watchtowers.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
attributed, Only Mystery: Federico García Lorca's Poetry in Word and Image
Relish the fresh landscape of my wound,
break rushes and delicate rivulets,
drink blood poured on honeyed thigh.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
"Sonnet of the Garland of Roses"
Let the skein never end
of I love you you love me, ever burnt
with decrepit sun and old moon;
for whatever you don't give me and I don't ask of you
will be for death, which does not leave
even a shadow on trembling flesh.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
"The Poet Tells the Truth"
In our eyes the roads
are endless.
Two are crossroads of
the shadow.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
"Eyes"
Devoutly the teachers point out huge fumigated domes;
but beneath the statues there's no love,
no love beneath the eyes set in crystal.
Love is there, in flesh ripped by thirst,
in the tiny hut struggling against the flood;
love is there, in ditches where snakes of hunger wrestle,
in the sad sea that rocks dead gulls,
and in the darkest stinging kiss under pillows.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
"Cry to Rome", A Poet in New York
I have often lost myself in the sea, ears full of newly cut flowers, tongue full of love and agony.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
Four Puppet Plays
Everything's a fan.
Brother, open up your arms.
God is the pivot.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
"Rays"
The world is a shoulder of dark meat (black flesh of an old mule). And the light is on the other side.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
letter to Melchor Fernandez Almagro, autumn 1924
Adam & Eve.
The serpent cracked
the mirror
in a thousand pieces,
& the apple
was his rock.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
"Initium"
Moon
like a large stainedglass window
that breaks on the ocean.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
"A Game of Moons"
Life is laughter amid a rosary of death.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
attributed, Only Mystery: Federico García Lorca's Poetry in Word and Image
My poetry is a game.
My life is a game.
But I am not a game.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
letter to Melchor Fernandez Almagro, autumn 1924
Only mystery allows us to live, only mystery.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
attributed, Only Mystery: Federico García Lorca's Poetry in Word and Image
The wounds were burning like suns
at five in the afternoon,
and the crowd broke the windows
At five in the afternoon.
Ah, that fatal five in the afternoon!
It was five by all the clocks!
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
"Llanto por Ignacio Sanchez Mejias"
The still pool of your mouth
under a thicket of kisses.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
"Remansos: Variación", El Diván del Tamarit