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.

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.

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