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    AC Benus
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Stories posted in this category are works of fiction. Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are created by the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you. 

Lorca’s "Love from the Darkness Sonnets" - 2. lashings and the written word

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Llagas de amor

 

Esta luz, este fuego que devora,

este paisaje gris que me rodea,

este dolor por una sola idea,

esta angustia de cielo, mundo y hora,

 

este llanto de sangre que decora

lira sin pulso ya, lúbrica tea,

este peso del mar que me golpea,

este alacrán que por mi pecho mora,

 

son guirnalda de amor, cama de herido,

donde sin sueño, sueño tu presencia

entre las ruinas de mi pecho hundido.

 

Y aunque busco la cumbre de prudencia

me da tu corazón valle tendido

con cicuta y pasión de amarga ciencia.

 

 

 

Lashings of love

 

Within this light, this fire meant to devour,

this gray landscape forever surrounding me,

this suff’ring of a single identity,

this heartbreak of heaven, the earth, and time’s endless hour,

 

this tearful shedding of a bloody shower

once on a pale lyre, or lubed firebrand free,

this weighty pulse striking on me from the sea,

this scorpion of my chest who makes there his bower,

 

these are the entwined lashings of love, a bed of hurt,

where sleepless, I dream of your presence’s allure

among the ruins of the sunken chest ‘neath my shirt.

 

And though I seek the high ground of a wisdom most pure,

your heart spreads below as a valley desert

of hemlock lace and torment like the cruelest cure.

 

 

---------------------------------------------------

 

 

El poeta pide a su amor que le escriba

 

Amor de mis entrañas, viva muerte,

en vano espero tu palabra escrita

y pienso, con la flor que se marchita,

que si vivo sin mí quiero perderte.

 

El aire es inmortal. La piedra inerte

ni conoce la sombra ni la evita.

Corazón interior no necesita

la miel helada que la luna vierte.

 

Pero yo te sufrí. Rasgué mis venas,

tigre y paloma, sobre tu cintura

en duelo de mordiscos y azucenas.

 

Llena, pues, de palabras mi locura

o déjame vivir en mi serena

noche del alma para siempre oscura.

 

 

 

The poet asks his love to write him

 

Love of my viscera, living death strikes me through,

for in vain I seek a written word to appear

and think, along with the wilting flowers, how drear

that inadvertently I’ve been displaced by you.

 

Yet, the air is immortal. The inert stone too

neither knowing to embrace shadows or the clear;

domestic hearts’ interiors need not afear

the frostbit honey the moon sheds each night anew.

 

But how I suffered. Ripped my vessels to atone,

war tiger and peace dove straddling your waist’s girth whole

in a battle of love-bites and lilies outgrown.

 

So bridge, therefore, with words my madness, and control;

or let me stay serene while I travel alone

through night’s ceaseless shadows with my ever-dark soul.

 

_

Copyright © 2021 AC Benus; All Rights Reserved.
  • Love 5
Stories posted in this category are works of fiction. Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are created by the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you. 
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Lashings of Love - such an apt title for this sharply drawn picture of the poet in love. How could he not yearn for a message from his beloved? How could silence not cause him to fear and think a dozen times over of their kisses and lovemaking? 

  • Love 2
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On 6/7/2021 at 7:57 AM, Parker Owens said:

Lashings of Love - such an apt title for this sharply drawn picture of the poet in love. How could he not yearn for a message from his beloved? How could silence not cause him to fear and think a dozen times over of their kisses and lovemaking? 

Thank you, Parker. I hope the vivid images come together to tell their stories

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Again a masterful translation. Just a comment, with all due respect: “amor de mis entrañas” means for me something on the way to “my innermost love”. It’s an idiom here in Andalucía. Evidently, entrañas means viscera, but it’s an expression alluding to a love that is born deep within one’s soul, so deep it is part of the body. But that would be my reading of this verse, nothing more, nothing to distract from an excellent job on pouring Lorca’s heart int English. 
 

  • Love 1
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9 hours ago, JACC said:

Again a masterful translation. Just a comment, with all due respect: “amor de mis entrañas” means for me something on the way to “my innermost love”. It’s an idiom here in Andalucía. Evidently, entrañas means viscera, but it’s an expression alluding to a love that is born deep within one’s soul, so deep it is part of the body. But that would be my reading of this verse, nothing more, nothing to distract from an excellent job on pouring Lorca’s heart int English. 
 

Thank you for your comments, JACC. They are greatly appreciated. Concerning amor de mis entrañas, there is a great overlap of the "body and soul" meanings connected with entrañas and viscera. For example, when someone has a deeply emotional reaction to a work of art, they could describe the experience as visceral. When saying this, the person is saying they've had 'a gut reaction' that is full of emotion and born from a very primal source within them.

If anything, I wonder if Corazón interior no necesita holds some idiomatic meaning that escapes me. I've never been confident that "domestic hearts’ interiors" captures the feeling I get from the Spanish. 

Thanks again!       

Edited by AC Benus
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