A Reminder
Death is a desert
with no
sun
a frozen caterpillar
howling at
the moon
an infant with
the alphabet
stamped on
his tiny
lips
death is a bread-less
hot dog singing silent
cantatas
a ballerina strutting
along the coke
lines
an invisible dream
that won’t stop
bleeding
death is a speaker
a serpent
a saint
death is a toothpick
a saucepan
an old sofa drying on
the footpath at
9am
death
is
here
now
reminding
me
once
again
not
to
forget
its
name.
with no
sun
a frozen caterpillar
howling at
the moon
an infant with
the alphabet
stamped on
his tiny
lips
death is a bread-less
hot dog singing silent
cantatas
a ballerina strutting
along the coke
lines
an invisible dream
that won’t stop
bleeding
death is a speaker
a serpent
a saint
death is a toothpick
a saucepan
an old sofa drying on
the footpath at
9am
death
is
here
now
reminding
me
once
again
not
to
forget
its
name.
Invisibile Afghan with the Apparition on the Beach of the Face of García Lorca in the Form of a Fruit Dish with Three Figs -- Salvador Dalí
Dalí called his paintings “hand painted dream photographs.” This 1938 work was in part an homage to his friend Federico García Lorca, who had been brutally murdered 2 years earlier. When José Valdés Guzmán, the gobernador civil of Granada, phoned his superior in Sevilla to ask what he should do with the jailed poet, general Queipo de Llano replied “Dadle café, mucho café!” – Give him coffee, lots of coffee. CAFÉ was an anagram for Camaradas Arriba Falange Española, the triumphant cry of Francisco Franco’s firing squads in “the performance of their duty.” He was buried in an unmarked grave. His remains have never been located.
ReplyDeleteThe closing lines of Lorca’s “Fabula y rueda de los tres amigos”:
The white stone can beat in the blood of a deer
and the deer can dream through the eyes of a horse.
When the pure forms sank
under the cri cri of daisies
I understood they had murdered me.
They searched the cafés and the graveyards and churches,
they opened the wine casks and wardrobes,
they destroyed three skeletons to pull out their gold teeth.
Still they couldn't find me.
They couldn't?
No. They couldn't.
But they learned the sixth moon fled against the torrent,
and the sea remembered, suddenly,
the names of all her drowned.