Ghazal of Unexpected Love
No one could fathom the perfume,
the dark magnolia of your belly.
None could know what hummingbird of love
you crushed between your lips.
A thousand Persian colts were sleeping
in the square with moonlight from your brow,
meanwhile I fastened four nights in thrall
to your waist, that enemy of snow.
Between the gypsum and jasmine, your glance
was a pale bough of seeds.
I hunted in my breast for your offering,
the ivory letters that spell always.
Always, always: garden of my agony,
your fugitive body forever,
a drink of your arteries in my throat,
already your lightless mouth holds no candle at my dying.
—Frederico García Lorca
Trans. Stephanie Rose Adams
SHARKPACK Poetry Review 
4 responses to “For St. Valentine: Seven Days of Love Poems. Lorca.”
Lorca is tricky for me. Initially I was turned off but then I discovered I’d read a very bad translation. I feel as if his work is so precise it demands a brilliant translation or it is ruined, don’t you think?
I always want for ‘brilliant translation’, so yeah.
Translation is an epistolary collaboration in which, for the vast majority of cases, the letters pass as ships in the night. Translation is an act of love, foremost, and an act of devotion to a cause. Garcia Lorca’s indulgences come from the natural rhythms and sensuality of the Spanish language. Translating him, I’ve found, is about knowing when to tame and when to heighten: in some instances our language can’t carry the proper weight, and in others, the weight is too much. If it’s the Duende that’s in these poems, that dark spirit that guides them, then it is to that the translating poet must devote herself to, infinitely moreso than to the literal equivalences of words.
In order for the translation to be “good”, there must be vision and courage on both ends. To be “brilliant”, I believe it also requires that Deep Calleth Unto Deep.
All that said, how does this particular translation strike you?
What happens in the ‘natural rhythms, ‘ SRA, that causes the comparatively long last line? Was the line long in the Spanish as well?