Dialogue - after Lorca

Children are singing
across a quiet night
under a clear clean sky
the strength of such serenity !

Where do they derive their divinity ?
They are the beating heart of this fiesta !

I/me/myself
The singing of the bells
is lost to the clouds
Where did you get your little hands of Spring ?

Children
We have sung this for you
in the plaza
beneath a clear clean sky
a fountain of strength and serenity

I/me/myself
a blood-red rose
and a hundred snow-white lillies

Children
made of the water
these are the songs of the waves
under clear clean skies
fountains of serenity
What do you feel in your mouth
wine-red and dry ?

I/me/myself
I feel the flavour of bones
in my enormous skull

Children
Drink the water of tranquillity
listen to the song of the waves
under a clear clean sky
flows serenity !
Why have you wandered
so far from the plaza ?

I/me/myself
go and ask the sages
and princesses !

Children
Who have you encountered
on this; the road of poets ?

I/me/myself
the singers of fountains
Singers of serenity

Children
are you going far,
very far from the earth and the sea ?

I/me/myself
As far as the light
which shines from my heart
as far as the lost singing of the bells
their deleriums and rages
and further still;
further than even the mountains dare to climb
further than the seas which swallow up the stars
further than the thrice-betrayed Messiah

Than my Master who unclothes me
my antique soul
my child-soul
grown fat upon fancies
like a pillow stuffed with feathers
like a glass full of sand ...

Children
You must sing with us in the plaza
under the clear clean sky
by the fountain of serenity

The Palace of Infidelity

- after Lorca

And what I wish to wash away,
in the river of blind faith,
is what holds me to my wedding vows

for that night in Santiago,
in the house of compromises,
I saw the apogee of folly
and upon the pyre of everything I had promised
my dying protests burned

like a sleeping fish,
I was easily netted
I was as the ram to the ewe

the riptides the undertow
my resistence the afterglow

oh like an empty plaza
surrounded by ten cathedrals
with no light
to shine upon their silver chalices

the twilight falls
on a lying dog
who longs to swim
in the river of blind faith
once more

Last Song - after Lorca

Here comes the night

Galilean moonbeams
mark the passing lateness

Here comes the night

and a great tree sings to itself
the words of its last song

Here comes the night

Yes, and you come too
for the sake of the air

Here comes the night

My loveliest encountress,
my deepest valley

ah the darkness !
of that deep valley.