Translation
For those of you, English speakers, who are interested in Spanish poetry and in the Gipsy Lore, I translated the poem from Lorca. Enjoy.
Notice how despite he would take the "honor" of a maid, which would have been disastrous for her life and for her family's reputation, she is still the naughty one. For she was married and cheated.
The unfaithful wife.
(Federico GarcÃa Lorca. Translated by Maribel Rico)
So I took her to the river
Believing she was a maid
But she had a husband.
It was the night of Santiago
and almost by compellation.
The streetlights shut down
The crickets lit up.
Around the last city corners
I touched her sleepy breasts,
all of a sudden they opened
like a jacinth-branch bouquet.
The starch of her underskirt
sounded inside of my ear
like the stabbing of ten knifes
in a silky drapery.
Cups without silvery light,
tall had grown the threes,
and a canine horizon
barking away far from the river.
Beyond the raspberry bushes,
Passed the rushes and the hawthorns,
Underneath her hairy mat
I made a hole in the lime.
I rid myself of the tie,
she rid herself of the dress.
I dropped the belt with the gun,
She, dropped her four bodices.
Neither nards nor sea shells
have such delicate skin.
Nor do the crystals in full-moon
shine with such refulgent glaze.
Her tights slipped away
like startled fresh-water fish,
half covered by lava
half covered by chill.
That night I roamed
along the best of trails
riding a nacreous mare
without bridles or stirrup.
I omit for my manly honor
The things she said in my ear.
The light of enlightment
makes me behave with discretion.
Dirty with kisses and sand
I took her away from the river
beating against the breeze
the swords of the lilyes.
I behaved as who I am,
a trustworthy gipsy man.
I gave her a sewing basket,
Large, satin, color of hay,
but I didn’t want to love her
because, having a husband,
She told me she was still maid
when I took her to the river.
Comments