Federico Garcia Lorca

The Sonnets to His Dark Love

The Sonnets to His Dark Love (Sonetos del Amor Oscuro - written in 1936 and published posthumously, in 1983) are Lorca's last poetic work, inspired by the style and themes of San Juan de la Cruz, Shakespeare and Gongora. They are his personal statement about love and poetic art, made even more poignant by the fact that he was arrested and executed by his country's dictatorial government the very same year the poems were written. The Sonnets are therefore not a complete work, cut horifically short by the poet's unjust and untimely death at the age of 37.

1. Sonnet of the Epistle

My love, my living death, my night and day,
I've long been waiting for your written word;
And I think, as the flowers fade away,
I'd rather lose you, not myself in the end.

The air is immortal, one can't hurt a stone;
The rocks can't tell and won't avoid the dark;
There is no heart in them to cry, or moan
With frozen honey spilt from the moon's arc.

I endured you, so tormented and tormenting,
A tiger and a dove below your belt,
In duels of bites and poppies never ending;

So let one word of yours fill up my madness
Or leave me alone to wither in the dead
Of my heart's night, forever veiled with darkness.

2. The Poet Talking to His Love over the Phone

Your voice just made the dune of my breast burn,
In the sweet wooden cabin where I lay;
On the South of my feet grew the aura of May,
On the North of my brow the bloom of fern;

A pine of light through narrow cracks of feeling,
I sing along, with no reveille or seed;
It's the first time that with mad joy I bleed,
While the garlands of hope hang from the ceiling.

Sweet voice and distant, given up to me;
Sweet voice and distant, spilt for me to taste;
Distant and sweet, ebbing away in haste;

Distant like a dark wounded female deer;
Sweet like a sigh forsaken in the snow;
Distant and sweet like tears in silken flow.

3. The Poet Telling His Love of the "Enchanted City" of Cuenca

Fancy a pinewood of deep enchanted darkness
With a miniature fortress in its arms,
Built of teardrops and dreams of pearly whiteness,
Walls of cotton, and airy webs of charms;

Can you see that blue valley of powdered full moons,
Where the river spills sparks of crystal sighs?
Can your fingers feel gently in night's silk lagoons
The lone rocks dressed in moss of love and lies?

Well, I wonder, did you ever think of me
In those streets where cruel silence whips the serpent
Prisoner to the crickets and the shadows,

And ghost faces from far across the sea?
Did you look in the transparent horizon
For my fiery heart's dahlia of grief and glee?

4. The Rose Wreath Sonnet

Crown me with roses! Now! Don't you see I'm dying?
Let me go! Weep, then sing! Now weep again!
Shadows have filled my throat; I feel like crying,
And there comes Winter bringing light and rain.

Between the one "I love you" and another,
Ether of stars, and quivering of plants;
Windflowers rising in a haze all over
Mourn in the dark, a whole year in advance.

Look at the humid landscape of my wound,
Where grow delicate elms and tender canes;
Drink from these thighs of honey all my spilt blood;

Come, take me, hold me tight against yourself,
Lips so devoured by love, and hearts so void,
Time shall find us united and destroyed.

5. The Wounds of Love

This light, this fire devouring my existence.
This gray landscape enfolding me in its arms.
This lament over words with such persistence.
This agony of the sky, the world, and the hours.

This open wound, adorning like a jewel
My harp throbbing no more, my furtive brand.
This weight of the ocean crushing me, so cruel,
And this sly scorpion nestling in my heart.

It is the wreath of love, my bed of pain
While on nights of no dream, I dream of you,
Lost inside what is left of my burnt soul;

And though I seek the peak of prudence, all
Your heart has to offer mine, is a vast plain
Of bitter wisdom and venomous dew.

Federico Garcia Lorca (1899-1936)
Sonetos del Amor Oscuro - Sonnets to His Dark Love (1936 - Published 1983)