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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Federico García Lorca
Federico García Lorca
Federico García Lorca is possibly the most important Spanish poet and dramatist of the twentieth century. García Lorca was born June 5, 1899, in Fuente Vaqueros, a small town a few miles...
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The Guitar  
by Federico García Lorca
Translated by Cola Franzen

The weeping of the guitar

begins.
The goblets of dawn
are smashed.
The weeping of the guitar
begins.
Useless
to silence it.
Impossible
to silence it.
It weeps monotonously
as water weeps
as the wind weeps
over snowfields.
Impossible
to silence it.
It weeps for distant
things.
Hot southern sands
yearning for white camellias.
Weeps arrow without target
evening without morning
and the first dead bird
on the branch.
Oh, guitar!
Heart mortally wounded
by five swords.



From Selected Verse by Federico García Lorca. Translations copyright © 2002 by Cola Franzen. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux. All rights reserved.

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