Federico Garsia Lorca best spanish poet?
For me definitely.. Here is one song.. Romance sonambulo
Verde que te quiero verde. Verde viento. Verdes ramas. El barco sobre la mar y el caballo en la montaña. Con la sombra en la cintura ella sueña en su baranda, verde carne, pelo verde, con ojos de fría plata. Verde que te quiero verde. Bajo la luna gitana, las cosas la están mirando y ella no puede mirarlas. Verde que te quiero verde. Grandes estrellas de escarcha vienen con el pez de sombra que abre el camino del alba. La higuera frota su viento con la lija de sus ramas, y el monte, gato garduño, eriza sus pitas agrias. ¿Pero quién vendra? ¿Y por dónde...? Ella sigue en su baranda, Verde came, pelo verde, soñando en la mar amarga. --Compadre, quiero cambiar mi caballo por su casa, mi montura por su espejo, mi cuchillo per su manta. Compadre, vengo sangrando, desde los puertos de Cabra. --Si yo pudiera, mocito, este trato se cerraba. Pero yo ya no soy yo, ni mi casa es ya mi casa. --Compadre, quiero morir decentemente en mi cama. De acero, si puede ser, con las sábanas de holanda. ¿No ves la herida que tengo desde el pecho a la garganta? --Trescientas rosas morenas lleva tu pechera blanca. Tu sangre rezuma y huele alrededor de tu faja. Pero yo ya no soy yo, ni mi casa es ya mi casa. --Dejadme subir al menos hasta las altas barandas; ¡dejadme subir!, dejadme, hasta las verdes barandas. Barandales de la luna por donde retumba el agua. Ya suben los dos compadres hacia las altas barandas. Dejando un rastro de sangre. Dejando un rastro de lágrimas. Temblaban en los tejados farolillos de hojalata. Mil panderos de cristal herían la madrugada. Verde que te quiero verde, verde viento, verdes ramas. Los dos compadres subieron. El largo viento dejaba en la boca un raro gusto de hiel, de menta y de albahaca. ¡Compadre! ¿Donde está, díme? ¿Donde está tu niña amarga? ¡Cuántas veces te esperó! ¡Cuántas veces te esperara, cara fresca, negro pelo, en esta verde baranda! Sobre el rostro del aljibe se mecía la gitana. Verde carne, pelo verde, con ojos de fría plata. Un carámbano de luna la sostiene sobre el agua. La noche se puso íntima como una pequeña plaza. Guardias civiles borrachos en la puerta golpeaban. Verde que te qinero verde. Verde viento. Verdes ramas. El barco sobre la mar. Y el caballo en la montaña.
1 Answer
As far as living poets, mine is Martín Espada. I went to law school with him; his is a distinct and eloquent voice. The first one below is especially good to read at Easter. The second one is good to post in your office by the supply cabinet.
Imagine the Angels of Bread
This is the year that squatters evict landlords, gazing like admirals from the rail of the roofdeck or levitating hands in praise of steam in the shower; this is the year that shawled refugees deport judges who stare at the floor and their swollen feet as files are stamped with their destination; this is the year that police revolvers, stove-hot, blister the fingers of raging cops, and nightsticks splinter in their palms; this is the year that darkskinned men lynched a century ago return to sip coffee quietly with the apologizing descendants of their executioners.
This is the year that those who swim the border's undertow and shiver in boxcars are greeted with trumpets and drums at the first railroad crossing on the other side; this is the year that the hands pulling tomatoes from the vine uproot the deed to the earth that sprouts the vine, the hands canning tomatoes are named in the will
that owns the bedlam of the cannery; this is the year that the eyes stinging from the poison that purifies toilets awaken at last to the sight of a rooster-loud hillside, pilgrimage of immigrant birth; this is the year that cockroaches become extinct, that no doctor finds a roach embedded in the ear of an infant; this is the year that the food stamps of adolescent mothers are auctioned like gold doubloons, and no coin is given to buy machetes for the next bouquet of severed heads in coffee plantation country.
If the abolition of slave-manacles began as a vision of hands without manacles, then this is the year; if the shutdown of extermination camps began as imagination of a land without barbed wire or the crematorium, then this is the year; if every rebellion begins with the idea that conquerors on horseback are not many-legged gods, that they too drown if plunged in the river, then this is the year.
So may every humiliated mouth, teeth like desecrated headstones, fill with the angels of bread.
--from "Imagine the Angels of Bread" by Martin Espada
Who Burns for the Perfection of Paper
At sixteen, I worked after high school hours at a printing plant that manufactured legal pads: Yellow paper stacked seven feet high and leaning as I slipped cardboard between the pages, then brushed red glue up and down the stack. No gloves: fingertips required for the perfection of paper, smoothing the exact rectangle. Sluggish by 9 PM, the hands would slide along suddenly sharp paper, and gather slits thinner than the crevices of the skin, hidden. Then the glue would sting, hands oozing till both palms burned at the punchclock.
Ten years later, in law school, I knew that every legal pad was glued with the sting of hidden cuts, that every open lawbook was a pair of hands upturned and burning.
--from "City of Coughing and Dead Radiators" by Martin Espada
For more info, go here: link text
