[Reads the following]:
From Federico García Lorca: Suites
(published by Green Integer, 2001)
Night: A Suite for Piano & Poet's Voice
Sketches
That road
got no people.
That road.
That weevil
got no home.
That weevil.
And this sheepbell
gone to sleep.
This sheepbell.
Prelude
The bullock
slowly
shuts his eyes.
Heat in the stable.
Prelude to
the night.
In a Corner of the Sky
The old
star
shuts her bleary eyes.
The new
star
wants to paint the night
blue.
(In the firtrees on the mountain:
fireflies.)
The Whole Works
The wind’s hand
caresses the forehead of space
again &
again.
The stars half-close
their blue eyelids
again &
again.A Star
There is a tranquil star,
a star that has no eyelids.
—Where?
—A star ...
In sleepy water.
In the pond.
Swath
O St. James Road.
O Milky Way.
(O night of love for me
when yellow bird was painted
painted
painted
up in the lemon tree.)
One
That romantic star
(one for magnolia,
one for the roses).
That romantic star
just went crazy.
Tralalee,
tralala.
(Sing, little frog, in your shadowy
hut.)
Ursa Major
Bear mother
gives suck to the stars
astride her belly:
Grunt
grunt.
Run off, star babies:
tender little stars.
Memory
Our Lady Moon still hidden,
playing ring around a wheel.
She makes herself look silly.
Loony moon.
At the Poorhouse
And the poor stars
that have no light
—o sorrow,
sorrow,
o lamentation!—
end up stuck
in muddy blue.
O sorrow,
sorrow,
o lamentation!
Comet
There on Sirius
are babes.
Venus
Open sesame
by day.
Shut sesame
at night.
Below
Space & stars
reflected into sound.
Liana ghosts.
Harp labyrinths.
The Great Sadness
You can’t look at yourself
in the ocean.
Your looks fall apart
like tendrils of light.
Night on earth.
A Newton Suite
Newton’s Nose
Onto the nose of Newton
a large apple falls.
A meteor of truths.
Last fruit to dangle from
the tree of Science.
And big Newton scratches
his Saxon nostrils.
A white moon over
these barbaric strings of lace:
the beech trees.
In the Woods
The gnomes
astride their secrets
tear
their beards out.
They tie up Death
& make the Echoes
mislead men
with mirrors.
In a corner
lies the secret:
in the open,
dead.
His companions
mourn him.
A blue boy
with iron feet—
a glowing star
between his eyebrows.
His companions
mourn him.
And the green lake trembles.
In the wind.
Harmony
Waves
rhyme with sighs
& stars with
crickets.
Atremble in the cornea
the whole cold sky.
A dot, a synthesis,
infinity’s.
But who joins waves
with sighs?
And stars
with crickets?
Just hope these geniuses
be missing something.
The proofs keep drifting by
among us.
The Philosopher’s Last Walk
Newton
was taking a walk.
Death had followed him,
strumming his guitar.
Newton
was taking a walk.
The worms gnawed through
his apple.
The wind hummed in the trees,
the river beneath the branches.
(Wordsworth would have cried.)
The philosopher was striking
unimaginable poses,
was waiting for another apple.
He ran along the road.
He stretched out by the water.
He saw how his face would sink
in the moon’s reflection.
Newton
wept.
And high up on a cedar
two old owls yammered.
Slowly in the night the wise man
went back home.
He dreamt enormous pyramids
of apples.
Replica
Adam ate an apple
from the Virgin Eve.
Newton was a second Adam—
Science’s.
The first knew
Beauty.
The second a Pegasus
bowed down by chains.
And neither one was guilty.
Their two apples
pink
& fresh
but with a bitter
history.
The severed breasts of
innocence, poor child.
Question
Why was it the apple
& not
the orange
or the polyhedral
pomegranate?
Why this virgin fruit
to clue them in,
this smooth & gentle
pippin?
What admirable symbol
lies dormant at its core?
Adam, Paris, Newton
carry it inside their souls
& fondle it without a clue
to what it is.
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