I need to start reading more poems in translation. And probably from writers more obscure than the great Spanish writer Federico García Lorca (1898-1936)….but for tonight, this piece by him is too moving to keep to myself.
“Song of the Barren Orange Tree”
Woodcutter.
Cut my shadow from me.
Free me from the torment
of seeing myself without fruit.
Why was I born among mirrors?
The day walks in circles around me,
and the night copies me
in all its stars.
I want to live without seeing myself.
And I will dream that ants
and thistleburrs are my
leaves and my birds.
Woodcutter.
Cut my shadow from me.
Free me from the torment
of seeing myself without fruit.
translated by W.S. Merwin
live in the layers 