1. Gacela of Unforseen Love - Federico Garcia Lorca
‘Gacela of Unforseen Love’ explores the relationship between love and despair through a remembered romance which has run its course. Federico Garcia Lorca was born in Fuente Vaqueros, a small village near Granada in 1898. A poet and playwright, he is broadly regarded as one of the greatest writers in the Spanish language. He was tragically murdered in the early stages of the Spanish Civil War, most likely on account of his homosexuality. The ‘Gacela of Unforseen Love‘ is taken from his collection, The Tamarit Divan, which was published posthumously in 1940 although the poems were written between 1931-1934. Like much of Lorca’s poetry, it is informed by his close connection to the Andalusian landscape, culture and history, particularly the region’s Arabic connections.
No one understood the perfume
of the dark magnolia of your womb.
Nobody knew that you tormented
a hummingbird of love between your teeth.
A thousand Persian little horses fell asleep
in the plaza with moon of your forehead,
while through four nights I embraced
your waist, enemy of the snow.
Between plaster and jasmine, your glance
was a pale branch of seeds.
I sought in my heart to give you
the ivory letters that say “siempre”,
“siempre”, “siempre” : garden of my agony,
your body elusive always,
that blood of your veins in my mouth,
your mouth is already lightless for my death.
2. What Spain Was Like - Pablo Neruda
The poem begins with the speaker describing how Spain is under a great deal of pressure. The country has been pushed to its limits and then pounded like a drum. Its highs and lows have been lashed by storms but Neruda still finds a great deal to love. He recalls the beauty of the countryside and the “poor” people who lived there. He mourns over the losses the country suffered and how it changed. In the second half of the poem, he speaks in greater detail on the duality of the country. It is at the same time “rough” and “smooth.” The wine, a symbol of the resources the country has to offer, is “violent” and “delicate,” causing good and bad events to befall the land. The text ends with a hopeful message about the resounding goodness of Spain that will last longer than the strife.
Spain was a taut, dry drum-head
Daily beating a dull thud
Flatlands and eagle’s nest
Silence lashed by the storm.
How much, to the point of weeping, in my soul
I love your hard soil, your poor bread,
Your poor people, how much in the deep place
Of my being there is still the lost flower
Of your wrinkled villages, motionless in time
And your metallic meadows
Stretched out in the moonlight through the ages,
Now devoured by a false god.
All your confinement, your animal isolation
While you are still conscious
Surrounded by the abstract stones of silence,
Your rough wine, your smooth wine
Your violent and dangerous vineyards.
Solar stone, pure among the regions
Of the world, Spain streaked
With blood and metal, blue and victorious
Proletarian Spain, made of petals and bullets
Unique, alive, asleep - resounding
