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.
