Lorca and the Frantic Guy Outside My House

I'd already found this poem to post for tonight, so I'll share this first.

Casida of the Dark Doves

Federico García Lorca

Trans. W.S. Merwin

Through the branches of the laurel
I saw two dark doves.
The one was the sun,
the other the moon.
Little neighbors, I said to them,
where is my tomb?
In my tail, said the sun.
In my throat, said the moon.
And I who was walking
with the earth at my belt
saw two eagles of marble
and a naked girl.
The one was the other
and the girl was no one.
Little eagles, I said to them,
where is my tomb?
In my tail, said the sun,
in my throat, said the moon.
Through the branches of the laurel
I saw two naked doves.
The one was the other
and both were no one.




Apparently, a casida is a Persian form, a longer poem with a particular structure featuring a single rhyme. I'm not sure why, since even in the original Spanish there are multiple rhymes, and the poem itself is quite short. But the repetition, the imagery, the silence all around the poem is pretty stunning. 


As I was on the porch reading this, someone walked by across the street proclaiming, almost yelling. I don't know if he was agitated, crazy or just on a cell phone. But he said this.


"Shake your ass all the way to the hospital!"


It's a great line, a little Beat, a little Bukowski in it (not my favorite poet but we'll deal with that another time). It just drove home the point that there's poetry all around us, but only if you're listening. And only if you make it poetry by the way you listen.