Dear Mr. VP,

I’m so lucky to be surrounded by my communities.

Knowing I wasn’t having a great day, a friend texted this morning and asked: could she send me money for something from Starbucks? Or could she send me a poem?

I chose a poem.

This is not what she sent me. But I decided to pay it forward, and this is what I am sending you. Sometimes we just need poetry.

It’s by Federico Garcia Lorca. Appropriate, since he fought fascists, too.

Gacela of the Dark Death

I want to sleep the dream of the apples,
to withdraw from the tumult of cemeteries.
I want to sleep the dream of that child
who wanted to cut his heart on the high seas.

I don’t want to hear again that the dead do not lose their blood,
that the putrid mouth goes on asking for water.
I don’t want to learn of the tortures of the grass,
nor of the moon with a serpent’s mouth
that labors before dawn.

I want to sleep awhile,
awhile, a minute, a century;
but all must know that I have not died;
that there is a stable of gold in my lips;
that I am the small friend of the West wing;
that I am the intense shadows of my tears.

Cover me at dawn with a veil,
because dawn will throw fistfuls of ants at me,
and wet with hard water my shoes
so that the pincers of the scorpion slide.

For I want to sleep the dream of the apples,
to learn a lament that will cleanse me of the earth;
for I want to live with that dark child
who wanted to cut his heart on the high seas.

***

See also:

D