Lorca’s "Love from the Darkness Sonnets" - 1. cains and sweet complaints

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Translation of

Federico García Lorca’s 11

Sonetos del amor oscuro

written for Juan Ramírez de Lucas

“[Pienso en ti todo el tiempo, y lo sabes sin que tenga que decirlo, pero en silencio, y entre líneas,

debes poder leer el amor que siento por ti, y la ternura de mi corazón... Cuenta conmigo siempre”.]

—García Lorca a Ramírez de Lucas,

carta del 18 de julio de 1936

Soneto de la guirnalda de las rosas

¡Esa guirnalda! ¡pronto! ¡que me muero!

¡Teje deprisa! ¡cantal ¡gime! ¡canta!

Que la sombra me enturbia la garganta

y otra vez viene y mil la luz de Enero.

Entre lo que me quieres y te quiero,

aire de estrellas y temblor de planta

espesura de anémonas levanta

con oscuro gemir un año entero.

Goza el fresco paisaje de mi herida,

quiebra juncos y arroyos delicados,

bebe en muslo de miel sangre vertida.

Pronto ¡prontol! Que unidos, enlazados,

boca rota de amor y alma mordida,

el tiempo nos encuentre destrozados.

Translation of

Federico García Lorca’s 11

Love from the Darkness Sonnets

written for Juan Ramírez de Lucas

“I think of you all the time, and you know this without me having to say it, but silently,

and between the lines, you should be able to read the love I feel for you, and the

tenderness in my heart… Count on me always.”

—García Lorca to Ramírez de Lucas,

letter of July 18th, 1936 ^[1]

The chain of roses sonnet

This chain of flowers! Quickly! I’m about to die!

Link hastily, sing out, cry out, sing for the dead!

For that shadow clouding my throat beneath you spread

can a thousand times light a January sky.

Between how you love me and I love you must lie

the air of stars and the trembling of plants abed,

a brier of crown anemones lifting their head

with a dark, protracted moaning and year-long sigh.

Behold the new landscape of my injury, where

ruptured reeds and delicate streams now have a start

to taste from the thigh honey and shed blood in pair.

Quickly! Quickly! For soon our conjoined, entwined heart,

like a love-bitten mouth or soul suff’ring a tear,

must need be discovered by Time broken apart.

~

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Soneto de la dulce queja

Tengo miedo a perder la maravilla

de tus ojos de estatua y el acento

que me pone de noche en la mejilla

la solitaria rosa de tu aliento.

Tengo pena de ser en esta orilla

tronco sin ramas, y lo que más siento

es no tener la flor, pulpa o arcilla,

para el gusano de mi sufrimiento.

Si tú eres el tesoro oculto mío,

si eres mi cruz y mi dolor mojado,

si soy el perro de tu señorío.

No me dejes perder lo que he ganado

y decora las aguas de tu río

con hojas de mi Otoño enajenado.

Sonnet of the sweetest complaint

I’m afraid I’ll somehow lose the fascination

of your statuesque eyes and your accent’s delight

that the solidary rose of your breath begun

placing solely upon my cheek at night.

I’m afraid I’m on one shore of oblivion

where I hate to be the branch-stripped tree feeling fright

that I’ve neither bloom, nor pulp, nor rot too hard won

to turn my suffering worm back to right.

If you are my darling and hidden treasure trove,

if you’re my cross and sodden pain to bear that grieves,

if I’m the pooch for you to lord over sans love,

At least let me keep what I have wrest from doubt’s thieves

and not brocade your waters with the sorrows wove

from my alienated autumn’s falling leaves.

~

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Notes:

[1] Sonetos del amor oscuro: the Spanish text is sourced from Federico García Lorca: Poesía complete III (Barcelona, 2004), ps. 201-208, available here:

https://archive.org/details/poesiavolumen300fede/page/200/mode/2up

Juan Ramírez de Lucas: came forward before he died in 2010 as the recipient of these love poems. Articles appeared about him in the Spanish press when his personal Lorca material was published in 2012. Here is one of them:

https://english.elpais.com/elpais/2012/05/13/inenglish/1336915937_226936.html?rel=listapoyo

Lorca letter: the quote is from the last letter the poet wrote before his murder for being Gay. It’s fitting it was to the man he loved, and with whom he hoped to quickly escape to safety in Mexico. Many Spanish intellectuals, queer and otherwise, did escape Fascism via this route. The English translation of the excerpt is presumably by the article’s author, Amelia Castilla.

https://english.elpais.com/elpais/2012/05/16/inenglish/1337182573_261333.html

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