García Lorca’s Guitar

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Witches in the Air (1797-98)

Empieza el llanto

de la guitarra.

Se rompen las copas de la madrugada.

Empieza el llanto de la guitarra.

Es inútil callarla.

Es imposible callarla.

Llora monótona

como llora el agua,

como llora el viento

sobre la nevada.

Es imposible callarla.

Llora por cosas

lejanas.

Finish reading ‘La guitarra’ here

The guitar raises up

Its cry.

The glasses of dawn are crushed.

The guitar raises up its cry.

It is useless to silence it.

It is impossible to silence it.

It weeps a monotone

As water weeps,

As wind weeps

Against the snowfall.

It is impossible to stop it.

It weaps for things

Far Away.

Sand of the hot south

That pleads for white camellias.

It weeps, arrow without a target,

Evening without a morrow,

And the first bird dead

On the branch.

Oh, guitar!

A heart mortally wounded

By five blades.

–Federico García Lorca, La guitarra in El poema del cante jondo (1921)(S.H. transl.)

Listen to Andrés Segovia perform Isaac Albéniz’s Leyenda (Asturias) from the Suite Española, op. 47 (1892)—in the Patio de los Arrayanes of the Alhambra Palace.