“In Spain,” García Lorca once wrote, “the dead are more alive than the dead of any other country in the world.”
In 1998 and 1999 I spent a couple of months in Grenada, Spain it was the 100th anniversary of Lorca’s birth and there were dozens of events, plays, poetry readings, art exhibits and even a show at the planetarium featuring Lorca’s drawings and poetry. I was able to bring the show for a series of events the Santa Fe Opera staged to support the world premier of opera Ainadamar, in 2005.
Fuente Grande
Here is my poem written in Granada. During the months I stayed there I would often sit in a courtyard and write. On taking a tour I found out I had been sitting below the window which would have been Lorca’s last view of Granada before being taken to be executed.
Fuente Grande, Alfacar, Spain
(The Moors called Fuente Grande, Ainadamar, “The Fountain of Tears.” “Is it my separation from Ainadamar, stopping the pulsation of my blood, which has dried up the flow of tears from the well of my eyes?” — Abul Barakat al Balafiqi circa AD 1372)
Circles expanding on the face of the pond.
As if the surface were broken with rain.
Looking in I see the drops are falling up from the bottom.
A stream rising from the bed of rocks.
Rippling with tension, the steady boil of the rosary.
Flowing into each other a bead of tears.
Fuente Grande forever quenching thirsty dogs.
936 steps from the place of Lorca's execution.
Is this the way words appear breaking free into the mind?
The way kisses are brought into too scarce being?
How the surface of the sun makes yellow?
Where the moon mines her similes?
Gravity has no standing in this courtroom.
The Judge’s gavel is careening upward.
What law breakers the bubbles.
What sinners those molecules of want.
Who cannot answer the prayer of water?
Who does not regret this spilling of justice?
Federico García Lorca was a prominent 20th-century Spanish poet, playwright, and theater director. He published numerous volumes of poetry during his lifetime, beginning with Impresiones y paisajes (approximately translated “Impressions and Landscapes”) (Paulino Ventura Traveset, 1918), and many were published posthumously. His lyrical work often incorporates elements of Spanish folklore, Andalusian flamenco and Gypsy culture, and cante jondo, or “deep song,” while exploring themes of romantic love and tragedy.
In August 1936, at the onset of the Spanish Civil War, García Lorca was arrested at his country home in Granada by Francisco Franco’s soldiers. He was executed by a firing squad a few days later, and his body was never found.