THE POET ASKS HIS LOVE TO WRITE
Visceral love, living death,
in vain, I wait your written word,
and consider, with the flower that withers,
I wish to lose you, if I have to live without self.
The air is undying: the inert rock
neither knows shadow, nor evades it.
And the heart, inside, has no use
for the honeyed frost the moon pours.
But I endured you: ripped open my veins,
a tiger, a dove, over your waist,
in a duel of teeth and lilies.
So fill my madness with speech,
or let me live in my calm
night of the soul, darkened for ever.
Federico García Lorca
Translation by A. S. Kline