para un nuevo tiempo

What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families
shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the
avocados, babies in the tomatoes! ­­and you, Garcia Lorca, what
were you doing down by the watermelons?

- Allen Ginsberg, "A Supermarket in California"

Equivocar el camino
es llegar a la nieve
y llegar a la nieve
es pacer durante varios siglos las hierbas de los cementerios.

Equivocar el camino
es llegar a la mujer,
la mujer que no teme la luz,
la mujer que mata dos gallos en un segundo,
la luz que no teme a los gallos
y los gallos que no saben cantar sobre la nieve.

Pero si la nieve se equivoca de corazón
puede llegar el viento Austro
y como el aire no hace caso de los gemidos
tendremos que pacer otra vez las hierbas de los cementerios.

Yo vi dos dolorosas espigas de cera
que enterraban un paisaje de volcanes
y vi dos niños locos que empujaban llorando las pupilas de un asesino.

Pero el dos no ha sido nunca un número
porque es una angustia y su sombra,
porque es la guitarra donde el amor se desespera,
porque es la demostración de otro infinito que no es suyo
y es las murallas del muerto
y el castigo de la nueva resurrección sin finales.

Los muertos odian el número dos,
pero el número dos adormece a las mujeres
y como la mujer teme la luz
la luz tiembla delante de los gallos
y los gallos solo saben volar sobre la nieve
tendremos que pacer sin descanso las hierbas de los cementerios.

- Pequeño Poema Infinito, Gabriel García Lorca
New York, 10 de enero de 1930

Over the past few days I've had some wonderful conversation with Mark Statman, who along with Pablo Medina has created a beautiful, very well-done translation of Lorca's Poeta en Nueva York, which Edward Hirsch has called "a Poet in New York for our time." It's impossible for a translation to ever be as good as the original, but for the English reader this it's as good as it gets -- and it's well-deserved, for a poet's words in which so many (including Allen Ginsberg) found resonance.

I first read his poetry when I was thirteen years old, perhaps a bit young to understand any of his intentions in any language. Reading a Lorca poem is almost like reading heiroglyphics; you're constantly looking for some way to crack his code, his duende and his moons and his blood and his blue and grey-to-black color schemes. The catch with this poet -- as with any poet -- is to understand him in his own jargon.

There's background story to this work, of course. Lorca composed Poet in New York during the several months he spent in New York as a student. It is important to know, while reading this work, that Lorca lived in Manhattan right at the time of the stock market collapse -- he happened to be walking on Wall Street on Black Tuesday, and witnessed six businessmen jumped out their windows. Over several months he responded to his feelings of appalledness, depression, and turmoil through poetry. He ended up with Poeta en Nueva York, which reads in some ways like an epic -- a map, if you will, of his emotional response to the things he experienced. After the World Trade Center tragedy, the translators realized upon re-reading the work that it responded to so much of the emotion and confusion that New Yorkers were experiencing in 2001. As poets themselves, they felt compelled enough to create a new translation that would transmit those sentiments as the author meant for them to be felt.

Eight years later, I find myself reading Poet in New York for the first time, and I'm beginning to see him from a different angle. "Lorca doesn't write in Spanish," Mark said to me, more than once, during our conversations. "Lorca writes in Lorca." I suppose this is how he translates too.