Category Archives: Poetry

Pequeno vals vienes (Little Viennese Waltz)

by Federico García Lorca
(June 5, 1898 — August 19, 1936)

Rough translation by Leonard Cohen (in 1998 for a song he called Take This Waltz on the album I’m Your Man)

En Viena hay diez muchachas,
un hombro donde solloza la muerte
y un bosque de palomas disecadas.
Hay un fragmento de la mañana
en el museo de la escarcha.
Hay un salón con mil ventanas.
         ¡Ay, ay, ay, ay!
Toma este vals con la boca cerrada.

Este vals, este vals, este vals,
de sí, de muerte y de coñac
que moja su cola en el mar.

Te quiero, te quiero, te quiero,
con la butaca y el libro muerto,
por el melancólico pasillo,
en el oscuro desván del lirio,
en nuestra cama de la luna
y en la danza que sueña la tortuga.
         ¡Ay, ay, ay, ay!
Toma este vals de quebrada cintura.

En Viena hay cuatro espejos
donde juegan tu boca y los ecos.
Hay una muerte para piano
que pinta de azul a los muchachos.
Hay mendigos por los tejados,
hay frescas guirnaldas de llanto.
         ¡Ay, ay, ay, ay!
Toma este vals que se muere en mis brazos.

Porque te quiero, te quiero, amor mío,
en el desván donde juegan los niños,
soñando viejas luces de Hungría
por los rumores de la tarde tibia,
viendo ovejas y lirios de nieve
por el silencio oscuro de tu frente.
         ¡Ay, ay, ay, ay!
Toma este vals del "Te quiero siempre".

En Viena bailaré contigo
con un disfraz que tenga
cabeza de río.
¡Mira qué orillas tengo de jacintos!
Dejaré mi boca entre tus piernas,
mi alma en fotografías y azucenas,
y en las ondas oscuras de tu andar
quiero, amor mío, amor mío, dejar,
violín y sepulcro, las cintas del vals.
Now in Vienna there's ten pretty women
There's a shoulder where death comes to cry.
There's a lobby with nine hundred windows.
There's a tree where the doves go to die.
There's a piece that was torn from the morning,
and it hangs in the Gallery of Frost --
        Ay, ay, ay, ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz,
take this waltz with the clamp on its jaws.

I want you, I want you, I want you
on a chair with a dead magazine.

In the cave at the tip of the lily,
in some hallway where love's never been.
On a bed where the moon has been sweating,
in a cry filled with footsteps and sand --
        Ay, ay, ay, ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz,
take its broken waist in your hand.

This waltz, this waltz, this waltz, this waltz
with its very own breath
of brandy and death,
dragging its tail in the sea.

There's a concert hall in Vienna
where your mouth had a thousand reviews.
There's a bar where the boys have stopped talking,
they've been sentenced to death by the blues.
Ah, but who is it climbs to your picture
with a garland of freshly cut tears?
        Ay, ay, ay, ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz,
take this waltz, it's been dying for years.

There's an attic where children are playing,
where I've got to lie down with you soon,
in a dream of Hungarian lanterns,
in the mist of some sweet afternoon.
And I'll see what you've chained to your sorrow,
all your sheep and your lilies of snow --
        Ay, ay, ay, ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz,
with its "I'll never forget you, you know!"

And I'll dance with you in Vienna,
I'll be wearing a river's disguise.
The hyacinth wild on my shoulder,
my mouth on the dew of your thighs.
And I'll bury my soul in a scrapbook,
with the photographs there, and the moss.
And I'll yield to the flood of your beauty,
my cheap violin and my cross.
And you'll carry me down on your dancing
to the pools that you lift on your wrist --
O my love, O my love
Take this waltz, take this waltz,
it's yours now. It's all that there is.


Are there popular bands today that would write a song like Spanish Bombs and mention a poet who was tortured and then murdered by a right-wing militia for his support of modernity in poetry, politics and morals? His only crime was to be outspoken about values that were not shared by a conservative and heavily armed group fighting for control of his country.

I remember mulling over Clash lyrics while in grad school with some folks who were working for Paul Preston. How places of great tragedy have turned into lazy drinking at a “disco casino” for British tourists.

The lyrics led me to Lorca’s poems and thus to a deeper understanding of life and civil war in 1930s Spain. It still gives me chills to listen and read about this period in time in Europe, not just because of social consciousness about incredible brutality against civilians but because of the sad similarity to world events unfolding even today. The Wikipedia explains the fundamental rift that left hundreds of thousands of civilians dead and that devastated the Spanish economy for decades:

During and in the wake of the war, the Nationalists carried out a program of mass killing of opponents where house searches were carried out, and unwanted individuals were often jailed or killed. Trade-unionists, known republican sympathisers and critics of Franco’s regime were among the first to be targeted. The Nationalists also carried out aerial bombings of civilian areas with the help of the German and Italian air forces.

[…]

Republican sympathizers proclaimed it as a struggle between “tyranny and democracy”, or “fascism and liberty”, and many young, committed reformers and revolutionaries joined the International Brigades, which thought saving the Spanish Republic was the front line of the war against fascism. Franco’s supporters, however, especially the younger members of the officer corps, viewed it as a battle between the red hordes of communism and anarchism on the one hand and “Christian civilization” on the other.

Poems for Mandela

The BBC has a nice story about poems written for Nelson Mandela and a book called Halala Madiba to celebrate his 88th birthday (next Tuesday). Apparently it’s hard to get but it includes almost 100 poems with authors including Seamus Heaney, Wole Soyinka, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Benjamin Zephaniah, Wally Mongane Serote, Jeremy Cronin, Tupac Shakur, Andrew Motion, Ntozake Shange, Dennis Brutus and Breyten Breyenbach.

I look forward to reading it. In the meantime, it reminds me that I should find some more LKJ. His albums are awesome and I always loved his poem in Creole called “Englan is a Bitch”:

    ‘W’en mi jus’ come to Landan town
    Mi use to work pa di andahgroun
    Y’u don’t get fi know your way aroun”

Happy Birthday Mr. Mandela!

From the Morning

by Nick Drake

    A day once dawned, and it was beautiful
    A day once dawned from the ground
    Then the night she fell
    And the air was beautiful
    The night she fell all around.

    So look see the days
    The endless coloured ways
    And go play the game that you learnt
    From the morning.

    And now we rise
    And we are everywhere
    And now we rise from the ground
    And see she flies
    And she is everywhere
    See she flies all around

    So look see the sights
    The endless summer nights
    And go play the game that you learnt
    From the morning.

What would the world be like if Drake had fulfilled his plans to be a programmer?

Flying at Night

pengy

      by Ted Kooser

      Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations.
      Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies
      like a snowflake falling on water. Below us,
      some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death,
      snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn
      back into the little system of his care.
      All night, the cities, like shimmering novas,
      tug with bright streets at lonely lights like his.