<Siguiriya para Federico>
Over long shadows of the garden,
A thin blood-line of morning –
A cross on the mountains of Sierra de la Alfaguara –
Far away, the purple trilling of one bird.
Without a confession, you follow a dead candle of moon,
Up through chalk balconies
wound with orange capsicum and geraniums –
Past el Fuente Grande and ecru walls in voices of sleep –
Past the dark squares of Spain.
Over the consuming night,
Stars in red jasper anointed a collapsing shadow.
Everywhere, silver bones of katsura trees rustled:
A muffled arc of steps ending in the still olive grove.
White carnations rippled in the dark
like a simple weave of burial linen –
Scepters of tall grass beat the air in rushing wings.
Far away, one bird pronounced your name.
In a night of falling camellias,
You will breathe cold air and taste nettles of lime.
You will kneel to a broken coda of guitars:
On the ridge,
A lunar wind will prance like a rider-less, chess-black horse.
Above Víznar, in the small hours,
A final image formed at your mouth:
Three girls with paper roses in the reddening esplanade:
A storm of bougainvillea and violet henna of dawn.
Beyond the summer, a rumor of messiahs will end.
A pieta of weeping acacias will bend across an empty field.
Myrrh of blank heavens will open –
A withered zodiac will circle your head in final landscape of poems.
Over long shadows of the garden,
A thin blood-line of morning –
A cross on the mountains of Sierra de la Alfaguara –
Far away, the faint pavane of one bird.