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Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias 1. Cogida and death
At five in the afternoon. It was exactly five in the afternoon.
A boy brought the white sheet at five in the afternoon.
A frail of lime ready prepared at five in the afternoon.
The rest was death, and death alone at five in the afternoon.
The wind carried away the cotton wool at five in the afternoon.
And the oxide scattered crystal and nickel at five in the afternoon.
Now the dove and the leopard wrestle at five in the afternoon.
And a thigh with a desolated horn at five in the afternoon.
The bass-string struck up at five in the afternoon.
Arsenic bells and smoke at five in the afternoon.
Groups of silence in the corners at five in the afternoon.
And the bull alone with a high heart! At five in the afternoon.
When the sweat of snow was coming at five in the afternoon,
when the bullring was covered with iodine at five in the afternoon.
Death laid eggs in the wound at five in the afternoon.
At five in the afternoon. Exactly at five o'clock in the afternoon.
A coffin on wheels is his bed at five in the afternoon.
Bones and flutes resound in his ears at five in the afternoon.
Now the bull was bellowing through his forehead at five in the afternoon.
The room was iridescent with agony at five in the afternoon.
In the distance the gangrene now comes at five in the afternoon.
Horn of the lily through green groins at five in the afternoon.
The wounds were burning like suns And the crowd was breaking the windows
at five in the afternoon. At five in the afternoon.
Ah, that fatal five in the afternoon! It was five by all the clocks!
It was five in the shade of the afternoon!
2. The Spilled Blood
I will not see it!
Tell the moon to come, for I do not want to see the blood
of Ignacio on the sand.
I will not see it!
The moon wide open. Horse of still clouds,
and the grey bullring of dreams with willows in the barreras.
I will not see it!
Let my memory kindle! Warm the jasmines
of such minute whiteness!
I will not see it!
The cow of the ancient world passed her sad tongue
over a snout of blood spilled on the sand,
and the bulls of Guisando, partly death and partly stone,
bellowed like two centuries sated with threading the earth.
No. I do not want to see it. I will not see it!
Ignacio goes up the tiers with all his death on his shoulders.
He sought for the dawn but the dawn was no more.
He seeks for his confident profile and the dream bewilders him
He sought for his beautiful body and encountered his opened blood
I will not see it! I do not want to hear it spurt
each time with less strength: that spurt that illuminates
the tiers of seats, and spills over the corduroy and the leather
of a thirsty multitude. Who shouts that I should come near!
Do not ask me to see it!
His eyes did not close when he saw the horns near,
but the terrible mothers lifted their heads.
And across the ranches, an air of secret voices rose,
shouting to celestial bulls, herdsmen of pale mist.
There was no prince in Seville who could compare to him,
nor sword like his sword nor heart so true.
Like a river of lions was his marvelous strength,
and like a marble torso his firm drawn moderation.
The air of Andalusian Rome gilded his head
where his smile was a spikenard of wit and intelligence.
What a great torero in the ring! What a good peasant in the sierra!
How gentle with the sheaves! How hard with the spurs!
How tender with the dew! How dazzling the fiesta!
How tremendous with the final banderillas of darkness!
But he sleeps without end. Now the moss and the grass
open with sure fingers the flower of his skull.
And now his blood comes out singing; singing along marshes and meadows,
sliding on frozen horns, faltering soulless in the mist
stumbling over a thousand hoofs like a long, dark, sad tongue,
to form a pool of agony close to the starry Guadalquivir.
Oh, white wall of Spain! Oh, black bull of sorrow!
Oh, hard blood of Ignacio! Oh, nightingale of his veins!
No. I will not see it!
No chalice can contain it, no swallows can drink it,
no frost of light can cool it, nor song nor deluge of white lilies,
no glass can cover it with silver. No.
I will not see it!
3. The Laid Out Body
Stone is a forehead where dreams grieve without curving waters and frozen cypresses.
Stone is a shoulder on which to bear Time with trees formed of tears and ribbons and
planets.
I have seen grey showers move towards the waves
raising their tender riddle arms, to avoid being caught by lying stone
which loosens their limbs without soaking their blood.
For stone gathers seed and clouds, skeleton larks and wolves of penumbra:
but yields not sounds nor crystals nor fire, only bullrings and bullrings and more bullrings
without walls.
Now, Ignacio the well born lies on the stone. All is finished. What is happening! Contemplate
his face: death has covered him with pale sulfur
and has place on him the head of dark minotaur.
All is finished. The rain penetrates his mouth. The air, as if mad, leaves his sunken chest,
and Love, soaked through with tears of snow, warms itself on the peak of the herd.
What are they saying? A stenching silence settles down.
We are here with a body laid out which fades away,
with a pure shape which had nightingales and we see it being filled with depthless
holes.
Who creases the shroud? What he says is not true!
Nobody sings here, nobody weeps in the corner, nobody pricks the spurs, nor terrifies the
serpent. Here I want nothing else but the round eyes
to see his body without a chance of rest.
Here I want to see those men of hard voice. Those that break horses and dominate rivers;
those men of sonorous skeleton who sing with a mouth full of sun and flint.
Here I want to see them. Before the stone. Before this body with broken reins.
I want to know from them the way out for this captain strapped down by death.
I want them to show me a lament like a river which will have sweet mists and deep shores,
to take the body of Ignacio where it loses itself
without hearing the double panting of the bulls.
Loses itself in the round bullring of the moon
which feigns in its youth a sad quiet bull, loses itself in the night without song of
fishes and in the white thicket of frozen smoke.
I don't want to cover his face with handkerchiefs that he may get used to the death he carries.
Go, Ignacio, feel not the hot bellowing Sleep, fly, rest: even the sea dies!
4. Absent Soul
The bull does not know you, nor the fig tree, nor the horses, nor the ants in your own house.
The child and the afternoon do not know you because you have dead forever.
The back of the stone does not know you nor the black satin, where you have crumbled.
Your silent memory does not know you because you have died forever
The autumn will come with small white snails, misty grapes and clustered hills,
but no one will look into your eyes because you have died forever.
Because you have died forever, like all the dead of the earth,
like all the dead who are forgotten in a heap of lifeless dogs.
Nobody knows you. No. But I sing of you. For posterity I sing of your profile and grace.
Of the signal maturity of your understanding. Of your appetite for death and the taste of
its mouth. Of the sadness in your once valiant gaiety.
It will be a long time, if ever, before there is born
an Andalusian so true, so rich in adventure. I sing of his elegance with words that groan,
and I remember a sad breeze through the olive trees.