The Encanto Sea

We fall asleep under the moon’s bed

of white love lather

In the showy swollen sky

By the island-pillowed Encanto Sea

Each there dream we our lovings and longings

Our will

I of her eyes and hair and lips

breath and near-bare breasts

That make my man-heart

stand fulsome still.  

She of my gardens, and words weaving

Her womanly fills take.

Then she loves me as if mother 

to lazy religious rain I make.

But she is really above all these,

Her inner beauty a momentous spring breeze.

Then a storm—

Such lightening past her!

Always one soaring swimming wind faster!

Ever a thousand singing roses truer, 

Though easily oft times honey-tongued

sadly bluer.

And through my over-powered

wantful heart’s cay

She cries a needy girl’s still life

water colored way. 

From her cheeks, falling to the ground

Each beautiful terrible tear

A newborn ceramic crown

in which vase

forever fulgent flowers

vie to stand.

Each vessel I save like oases in sand

to keep forever.

Seeing and helping me see

The time-gone forest’s sweet reality.

The boy plays his love harp there

to his sun-smelt words

of their Encanto Sea meetings

The watery red moon, eclipsed

so pleasing,

Together they away wanting,

All sorrow defeating

All sorrow, all sorrow defeating.

Spanish Lyrics by Federico Lorca

Entre yeso y jazmines, tu Mirada

era un palido ramo de simientes.

Yo ensque, para dante, por mi pecho

las letras de morfil que dicen siempre.

Siempre, siempre

jardin de mi agonia. . .

Un Raisenor apaga los suspiros,

y un faisan los ahuyenta por el polvo.

English Translation:

Among the plaster and jasmine you saw

I was a pallid branch of seeds.

I sought through my breast

to give you letters of ivory saying Always,

Always always

garden of my last breath . . .;

A nightingale extinguishes the sighs,

And a pheasant chases them through the dust.