Taktokah: lejana y sola

(Luna grande)


Taktokah


“I think you know Lorca. Did he get away?
Well, where can a poet run to?”
Miklos Radnoti


Lorca never left
home, the vega he loved
pulsed like blood

in his stanzas. He knew
how to beat out his passion
on air, on the pages

he wrote upon,
resonant as wood
of the Arabic oud,

the durbaka,
his words like the fingers
upon a dambula.

His words, ah his words,
Cirio, candil,
farol y luciérnaga.

And when in the olive
grove he raised his face
to the great scroll

of sky so that he’d
not be tempted to stare down
the muzzles of his

executioners, he knew
the toque of death,
the flamenco beat

of bullets on flesh
and the darkness
in which the little horse

gallops siempre
toward Córdoba.
lejana y sola.

KSB, from WAKE, a chapbook, Spring Street Editions, Sylva, NC.

Canción del jinete

Córdoba.
Lejana y sola.

Jaca negra, luna grande,
y aceitunas en mi alforja.
Aunque sepa los caminos,
yo nunca llegaré a Córdoba.

Por el llano, por el viento,
jaca negra, luna roja.
La muerte me está mirando
desde las torres de Córdoba.
¡
Ay que camino tan largo!
¡Ay mi jaca valerosa!
¡Ay que la muerte me espera,
antes de llegar a Córdoba!

Córdoba.
Lejana y sola.
- Federico García Lorca



taktokah: a gypsy rhythm in 9/10 time