Last night I had a dream that I was in a poker game with Salvador Dali, Ernest Hemingway, and Pablo Picasso, seriously. Picasso looked like Anthony Hopkins though, which makes sense, because that image of him stands out in my head more than actual pictures of Picasso. But I won’t imagine that it’s so shocking to say that I woke up slightly confused (what else is new?), and curious what the connection is there… I mean, I’m pretty damn familiar with the works of Dali and Hemingway, and so so on Picasso, but why those three? And then I remembered that Lollipop had mentioned Lorca to me last night, telling me that he was her favorite poet (after Brautigan, I presume). Lorca was somebody I certainly knew the name of, but the image in my head of him came to me pretty much the same way that Hopkins as Picasso did…

But that was last night and this is today, and on this lazy Sunday afternoon in which the sun was out for a while and is now hidden again and the wind is getting furiously cold, I’ve decided that we’re all going to enjoy one of the finer works by Spanish poet and dramatist Federico García Lorca:

The Gypsy And The Wind

by Federico García Lorca

Playing her parchment moon
Precosia comes
along a watery path of laurels and crystal lights.
The starless silence, fleeing
from her rhythmic tambourine,
falls where the sea whips and sings,
his night filled with silvery swarms.
High atop the mountain peaks
the sentinels are weeping;
they guard the tall white towers
of the English consulate.
And gypsies of the water
for their pleasure erect
little castles of conch shells
and arbors of greening pine.

Spanish civil war memorials.

Playing her parchment moon
Precosia comes.
The wind sees her and rises,
the wind that never slumbers.
Naked Saint Christopher swells,
watching the girl as he plays
with tongues of celestial bells
on an invisible bagpipe.

Sean Connery and Brigitte Bardot, 1968.

Gypsy, let me lift your skirt
and have a look at you.
Open in my ancient fingers
the blue rose of your womb.

Guernica by Pablo Picasso, 1937.

Precosia throws the tambourine
and runs away in terror.
But the virile wind pursues her
with his breathing  and burning sword.

Personally, I’d never give William S. Burroughs a sword. But that’s just me.

The sea darkens and roars,
while the olive trees turn pale.
The flutes of darkness sound,
and a muted gong of the snow.

Pablo Picasso and Brigitte Bardot in his studio, 1958. Picasso refused to paint Bardot.

Precosia, run, Precosia!
Or the green wind will catch you!
Precosia, run, Precosia!
And look how fast he comes!
A satyr of low-born stars
with their long and glistening tongues.

Soft Construction With Boiled Beans (Premonitions Of Civil War) by Salvador Dali, 1936.

Precosia, filled with fear,
now makes her way to that house
beyond the tall green pines
where the English consul lives.

Spanish Leftists shoot at a statue of Jesus.

Alarmed by the anguished cries,
three riflemen come running,
their black capes tightly drawn,
and berets down over their brow.

The Englishman gives the gypsy
a glass of tepid milk
and a shot of Holland gin
which Precosia does not drink.

Federico Borrell and Loyalist comrades at Cerro Muriano, September 5, 1936, as taken by Robert Capa.

And while she tells them, weeping,
of her strange adventure,
the wind furiously gnashes
against the slate roof tiles.

Loyalist Militiaman at the Moment Of Death, Cerro Muriano, September 5, 1936, also by Capa, depicting the last moments of Federico Borrell.

Brand New “Guernica” (mp3)

The Modern Lovers “Pablo Picasso” (mp3)