CASIDA OF THE BOY WOUNDED BY THE WATER By Federico Garcia Lorca

I want to go down to the well,

I want to go up the walls of Granada,

to watch the heart pierced through

by the dark thrust of water.

*

The wounded boy was moaning

under his crown of rime.

Pools, cisterns, fountains

raised their swords to the wind.

What a fury of love, what a wounding edge,

such nocturnal murmurs, such a white death!

Such deserts of light were crumbling

the sands of dawn!

The boy was alone,

the city asleep in his throat.

A water spout out of his dreams

wards off the hungry algae.

The boy and his agony, face to face,

were two green rains enlaced.

The boy stretched out on the ground,

and his agony bent over.

*

I want to go down to the well,

I want to die my own death, by mouthfuls,

I want to stuff my heart with moss,

to watch the boy wounded by the water.

*

Translated from the Spanish by Edwin Honig

*

From “The Selected Poems of Federico Garcia Lorca,” edited by Francisco Garcia Lorca and Donald M. Allen (W.W. Norton: 180 pp., $9.95 paper)