Lorca's "Ode to Walt Whitman" - 1. Oda a Walt Whitman

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Translation of

Oda a Walt Whitman

by Federico García Lorca

Ode to Walt Whitman

Along the East River and Bronx

the young men worked and sang out with their midriffs showing exposed,

handling the tire, the motor oil, the upholstery and the mallet.

Meanwhile, ninety thousand gold-diggers squeezed silver dollars from the stones,

the whole time the kids outlined the stoops and the boys’ highground points of view.

But none allowed themselves to nod off,

none of them dreamed of being the river,

none of them found love for the largest of leaves,

none of them sought the blue-tongued language of the foreshore.

Along the East River and Queensborough

the young men grappled and fought in fields of ingenuity,

while Jewish boys peddled the blush-rose of their circumcision

to Panpipe players along the river,

and herds of cloud bison driven ever onward by the wind

flowed in the sky over the reaches of bridges and rooftops.

But none of them would allow detainment,

none of them sought to be a nimbus,

none of them looked o’er and plucked the spleenwort

nor the amber-wheeled drum shell of the loose tambor.

For once the moon begins to rise

the block and tackles will roll to make the heavens tumble;

a frontier of steeples to encircle and limit memory

and coffins to take care of those too old or sick to work.

You, great New York City of sludge,

you great New York of deathsome cables and wires.

What angel is disguised in the apple of your cheek?

What faultless voice speaks the host-like bread and water of truth?

Whose terrible vision is of your Adonis flowers besmirched?

Not for a single moment, darling Walt Whitman of old,

have I failed to see your beard flutter with prairie butterflies,

or your shoulders, corduroy-clad and worn out by the moon,

or your thighs, bloodless as Apollo’s,

or your voice rising like a biblical column of ash;

darling old man who like the fog

expressed suffering equal to the birds

with your penis being pierced through by a needle-nosed steeple;

foe to womanizing satyrs,

enemy of the grapevine

and lover of honest-trade bodies hid beneath the coarsest cloth.

Not for a single moment, you red-blooded beauty

amongst the coal heaps, kiosks of advertising bills and railroad tracks

did you fail to dream yourself a river put to bed as one

with that sole comrade who could insert within your breast

an intimate pain like the one of a leopard caught unaware.

Not for a moment, you Adam of our bloodline, matcho

man alone upon the wave crests, darling Walt Whitman of old,

because those gath’ring on rooftops,

clustering safe within the bars,

breaking out in bunches from beneath the manhole covers,

peeking out from betwixt the legs of their hired drivers

or grinding away atop their absinthe platform stages –

these flamers, Walt Whitman – never dream of you.

Look, there’s one now! There goes another! Tumbling

all over your beard so luminous and unspoiled,

blond guys coming north, Black guys straight from the arena,

a seething multitude of catcalls and wrist waves,

like a pen of pussycats and sand pit of snakes

the out and proud flamers, Walt Whitman, flamers

made-up and muddy from tears, whipping boys for abuse,

boot-licks or boot-bites from their S/M dominators.

Look, there’s one now! There’s another! Stained fingers

consign by pointing out the shoreline where you dream

when one of your friends eats freely of your apple

with its subtle flavor of gasoline,

and the sun sings obliquely across

the navels of young men playing beneath the bridges.

But you weren’t pursuing the scraped together eyes abraded,

nor those wetlands the blackest where the kids get submerged,

nor the iced-over saliva,

nor the wounded S-curves bending like the belly of a frog

which takes flamers for a ride in fast cars and switchback roads

as the moon all the while whips them around the corners of terror.

You pursued an artist’s model who sought to be like a river,

a bull of a man whose dream could join the tire with the algae;

be father to your cross’ agony, camellia to your death,

and ‘passioned whimper through the blazing flames of your veiled equator.

For it is only natural that some men seek not to revel

in the rainforests of bloodlines crowding out the day to come.

For heaven has a shore where respite from life can be obtained

and the call to reproduce bodies voided in the light of dawning.

Our cross’ way, our cross’ way, then to dream and froth in ferment.

Such are the ways of the world, my fair friend, our cross’ way, our cross' way.

The dead, they decompose beneath the church clocks of the cities,

while war goes ever on with its million drab-uninformed rats,

and while the rich bequeath their dear

beloved death-bound brood little illumination,

they give an entitled life – but one not good, one not sacred.

And yet, the human race – if it so wills – can lift up our desires

like a branching streak of coral throughout the naked skies;

I know in the tomorrow to come, Loves shall be as boulders

and Time but a sleepy breeze to rustle branches.

With all this in mind, I don’t berate, Walt Whitman of old,

the kid who monograms a girly

name on the sham of his pillowcase,

or the young man who parades in a bridal gown ‘fore the mirror

in the safe obscurity of a closet,

or of those sad lonely-hearts in every bar of the land

who quaff hard waters with a snifter of boy-prostitution,

nor indeed, those mouse-men of the green-eyed monster

who love men but weld their lips in so-called brave silence.

But against you, you out and proud flamers of the cities,

With tumescent bodies and filthy intellects,

mother-muckers, harpies, bitches who refuse to be asleep

with the Love that upsets those thorn-crowns of complacency.

I’ll ever berate those who impart to up-and-coming young men

their polluted death-nuggets with embittered venom.

‘Cause of them, I’ll ever berate

These North American ‘fairies,’

These ‘bob-tails’ loose in Havana,

‘Bundles’ in Mexico,

‘Saracens’ of Cadiz,

‘Celery stalks’ of Seville,

‘Flower Pots’ of Madrid,

‘Flora’ of Alicante,

And ‘Adelaides’ of Portugal.

Out, proud queers of the world, assassinators of twink holy-ghosts;

enslaved, yoked to the feminine – you bitches of their boudoir –

on parade in the public places with flaunting diversity;

or lying in wait, upright and erect ‘mid poisoned landscapes.

Allow them no safe-spaces! For death

falls a-dripping from your eyes

and rounds up graying flowers from the broad perimeter of sludge.

Allow them no safe-spaces! Wake up!

Just let the confused-confounded, the straights,

the outdated, the self-appointed, the legal filers

to be the ones slapping gates shut on the Bacchanal.

But you, fair Walt Whitman, asleep on the Hudson’s shores,

your beard against phallic piers and hands outspoken;

Whether atop alluvial soil or snow, your words

call comrades who’ll protect your roebuck incorruptible.

Slumber; for you’ve done all you could.

A shakedown of construction stirs and walls-in the prairies

and America is overrun with devices and tears.

But I long for the potent air of the profoundest night

to peel the notes and flowers from the arch beneath which you lie

and have a Black child’s annunciation cry unto the white gold-hoarders

that now begins the reign of the staff of life.

~

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