This is the first poem in the book that I introduce the poet
Lorca, the beautiful Federico García Lorca from Southern
Spain.
A little bit more on him later, but here he is.
Incidentally, the idiot in the first line, that would be me.
"What idiot sits in a metal chair
by a tin fence when the storm commences?
The mountains disappear in a cloud of clouds.
The monsters reappear.
The result is a remarkably diverse array of desert life.
Yellow rain lilies, for one example.
Like all pleasures, sleep has become a passion
of my father's.
I remember we would live for these rains.
Years ago in Spain, we'd walk into Alayor in a downpour.
The old women under the shades in dresses and black scarves
would not lift one dark eyebrow from their lacework.
Not so much as a lisp of Catalonian greeting.
And why be obliged with Franco not yet dead long enough?
There was plenty of talk of how he'd murdered Lorca,
among many others, by ordering soldiers
to shoot point-blank at their enemy on a back road at dawn
in the presence of their Lord.
And the enemies, many of them servants of culture,
set off more or less on a fool's journey.
Inside the storm is like a long train ride.
Unable to afford a better class, you sit awake all night
in a chair.
Time to time you make your way to the club car,
then back to your dream.
On, on, the train plunges.
Maybe you hear music.
The train would be headed for a beach town or the signature
nightmare of your people, a shower of darkness.
These are extraordinary times.
The Inquisition is a clusterfuck of the inner ear.
One should not stand-in for someone else
unless the choice is clear."