Castilian poetry in songs & films

[Comte Arnau]

Great poems of Castilian literature in cinema and music.


Lope de Vega (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lope_de_Vega)

Esto es amor. Quien lo probó, lo sabe.
This is love. Whoever has tasted, knows it.

(Subtitles in English and Portuguese)
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Miguel Hernández (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel Hernández)

Oxen never prospered on the barren plains of Spain.
Who said they would throw a yoke round the neck of this race?
Who has ever yoked or hobbled a hurricane,
or who has held lightning prisoner in a cage?

Asturians of bravery, Basques of reinforced stone,
Valencians of joy and Castilians of soul,
worked like the earth and with the grace of wings;
Andalusians of lightning born amongst guitars
and forged on the torrential anvils of tears;
Extremadurans of rye, Galicians of rain and calm,
Catalans of firmness, Aragonese of age-old caste,
Murcians of dynamite planted like fruit trees,
Leonese, Navarrans, masters of hunger, sweat and the axe,
kings of the mines, lords of labour,
men who, amongst the roots, like valiant roots yourselves,
go from life to death, go from nothing to nothing:
there are people who, like weeds, want to put a yoke on you,
a yoke which you must leave broken across their backs.
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José de Espronceda (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_de_Espronceda)

Canción del Pirata (Song of the Pirate)

Que es mi barco mi tesoro My only treasure, my ship
Que es mi dios la libertad My only god, Liberty
Mi ley la fuerza y el viento My law, the might and the wind
Mi única patria, la mar My only country, the Sea
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Saint Teresa of Avila (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teresa_of_%C3%81vila)

Mystic poem, performed by the great voice of the Italian singer Mina.

Nada te turbe, nada te espante May nothing disturb you, may nothing scare you
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[Comte Arnau]

This week it's 75 years since the fine Granadine poet Federico García Lorca was shot and killed, the whereabouts of his body still being a mystery. I add this poem of his, greatly performed in a sort of psychedelic flamenco-rock by the late Enrique Morente. The song is from the album Omega, from 1996 but already a classic.

In the sky there is nobody asleep. Nobody, nobody.
Nobody is asleep.
The creatures of the moon sniff and prowl about their cabins.
The living iguanas will come and bite the men who do not dream,
and the man who rushes out with his spirit broken will meet on the
street corner
the unbelievable alligator quiet beneath the tender protest of the
stars.

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Nobody is asleep on earth. Nobody, nobody.
Nobody is asleep.
In a graveyard far off there is a corpse
who has moaned for three years
because of a dry countryside on his knee;
and that boy they buried this morning cried so much
it was necessary to call out the dogs to keep him quiet.

Life is not a dream. Careful! Careful! Careful!
We fall down the stairs in order to eat the moist earth
or we climb to the knife edge of the snow with the voices of the dead
dahlias.
But forgetfulness does not exist, dreams do not exist;
flesh exists. Kisses tie our mouths
in a thicket of new veins,
and whoever his pain pains will feel that pain forever
and whoever is afraid of death will carry it on his shoulders.

One day
the horses will live in the saloons
and the enraged ants
will throw themselves on the yellow skies that take refuge in the
eyes of cows.

Another day
we will watch the preserved butterflies rise from the dead
and still walking through a country of gray sponges and silent boats
we will watch our ring flash and roses spring from our tongue.
Careful! Be careful! Be careful!
The men who still have marks of the claw and the thunderstorm,
and that boy who cries because he has never heard of the invention
of the bridge,
or that dead man who possesses now only his head and a shoe,
we must carry them to the wall where the iguanas and the snakes
are waiting,
where the bear's teeth are waiting,
where the mummified hand of the boy is waiting,
and the hair of the camel stands on end with a violent blue shudder.

Nobody is sleeping in the sky. Nobody, nobody.
Nobody is sleeping.
If someone does close his eyes,
a whip, boys, a whip!
Let there be a landscape of open eyes
and bitter wounds on fire.
No one is sleeping in this world. No one, no one.
I have said it before.

No one is sleeping.
But if someone grows too much moss on his temples during the
night,
open the stage trapdoors so he can see in the moonlight
the lying goblets, and the poison, and the skull of the theaters.