Life of the Poet

Life of the Poet

Federico García Lorca, Granada, 1936

The middle of summer smudges the sky
with smoke, fills with tiny words,

a red drift into the soft black bulge of stars.
Stalks of maize unnerve the fields.
Faces are sitting down to bread and wine.

Somewhere, desnudo en lo oscuro,
lovers' tongues burn with their own yielding.
In a room, someone plays guitar.

And you shovel dirt in the cemetery,
your foot to the blade cuts deeper

where the earth smells of gypsy moons
that refuse to show their skulls.

Only minutes now,
and you'll be a whisper, a wind,
a book shelved among the stacks.