Song of the Barren Orange Tree

I was recently given Federico García Lorca's Collected Poems, and apart from the initial elation of returning to one of my favorite poets from the days when all that dearly I loved was Spanish-based, I discovered again that its oft-intractible medium speaks so often what I cannot.

In this world of shadow and settling, of consolation and complacency, of comfort and cage, we only see ourselves in mirrors and through the eyes of others. How, then, do we know what we are? how we are? how we are measured?

Followed incessantly and necessarily (or so it would seem) by shadow. Reflected always in mirrors. Always in terms of.

So Lorca would say here. Similarly a restless soul, I share his desperation. May we all. And may we all be fruitful, uncopied dreamers.



Song of the Barren Orange Tree

Woodcutter.
Cut down my shadow.
Deliver me from the torment
of bearing no fruit.

Why was I born among mirrors?
Day turns round and round me.
And night copies me
in all her stars.

Let me live unmirrored.
And then let me dream
that ants and thistledown
are my leaves and my birds.

Woodcutter.
Cut down my shadow.
Deliver me from the torment
of bearing no fruit.


[Federico García Lorca]