“Ghazal of the Terrible Presence” is my translation of “Gacela de la Terrible Presencia,” a poem from Federico García Lorca’s Diván del Tamarit.
My ghazal “American Boy” samples a line from “Ghazal of the Terrible Presence.” The narrator of “American Boy” addresses Count Vronsky in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. With his “cool waist” dressed in the sharp uniform of a Russian cavalry officer, Vronsky “taught” Anna the infidelity that estranged her from her son and led to her suicide. Agha Shahid Ali, the Kashmiri-American poet who taught English-language poets the traditional ghazal, introduced this sampling technique as a way for the poet to honor and acknowledge literary forebears.
“Ghazal of the Terrible Presence,” an English Translation of “Gacela de la Terrible Presencia”
I wish that the water be without riverbed.
I wish that the wind be without valleys.
I wish that the night be without eyes
and my heart without the golden flower;
that the oxen speak with giant leaves
and that the worm die of shade;
that the skull’s teeth shine
and the yellow ones drown silk.
I can see the duel of the wounded night
struggling coiled around the midday.
I refuse the sunset of green venom
and the broken gates where time suffers.
But don’t light your pristine nudity
like a black cactus open in the rushes.
Leave me with the hunger of dark planets,
but don’t teach me your cool waist.
by Federico García Lorca,
From Diván del Tamarit (1934)
Translated by E.A. Melino
Selections from Lorca’s Diván del Tamarit
“Gacela de la Terrible Presencia,” Spanish original of “Ghazal of the Terrible Presence”
Yo quiero que el agua se quede sin cauce.
Yo quiero que el viento se quede sin valles.
Quiero que la noche se quede sin ojos
y mi corazón sin la flor del oro;
que los bueyes hablen con las grandes hojas
y que la lombriz se muera de sombra;
que brillen los dientes de la calavera
y los amarillos inunden la seda.
Puedo ver el duelo de la noche herida
luchando enroscada con el mediodía.
Resisto un ocaso de verde veneno
y los arcos rotos donde sufre el tiempo.
Pero no ilumines tu limpio desnudo
como un negro cactus abierto en los juncos.
Déjame en un ansia de oscuros planetas,
pero no me enseñes tu cintura fresca.
by Federico García Lorca,
From Diván del Tamarit (1934)
Image: “Federico García Lorca: From a mural on a barn in his birthplace, Fuente Vaqueros, Andalucía, Spain.” Photos by Spencer Means. Used under CC BY-SA 2.0 License.
Selections from Lorca’s Diván del Tamarit
Image: “Federico García Lorca: From a mural on a barn in his birthplace, Fuente Vaqueros, Andalucía, Spain.” Photos by Spencer Means. Used under CC BY-SA 2.0 License.
To see the mural and its detail images as well as more photos from Andalucía, Provence and other places in Europe and the U.S., visit Spencer’s Flickr Page.