art so true.Like a river of lionswas his marvellous strength,and like a marble torosohis firm drawn moderation.The air of Andalusian Romegilded his headwhere his smile was a spikenardof wit and intelligence.What a great torero in the ring!What a good peasant in the sierra!How gentle with the sheaves!How hard with the spurs!How tender with the dew!How dazzling the fiesta!How tremendous with the finalbanderillas of darkness!But now he sleeps without end.Now the moss and the grassopen with sure fingersthe flower of his skull.And now his blood comes out singing;singing along marshes and meadows,sliding on frozen horns,faltering soulless in the mist,stumbling over a thousand hoofslike a long, dark, sad tongue,to form a pool of agonyclose to the starry Guadalquivir.Oh, white wall of Spain!Oh, black bull of sorrow!Oh, hard blood of Ignacio!Oh, nightingale of his veins!No.I will not see it!No chalice can contain it,no swallows can drink it,no frost of light can cool it,nor song nor deluge of white lilies,no glass can cover it with silver.No.I will not see it!Federico Garcia Lorca, Spain's greatest modern poet and playwright, was born June 5,1898 at Fuentevaqueros in the Spanish province of Granada. He began writing poems inhis late teens, reciting many of them in the local cafes. In 1919 he left to study law at theResidencia de Estudiantes in Madrid. There he met and became friends with film directorLuis Bunuel and painter Salvador Dali, among other Spanish notables of his generation. Lorca came to national prominence in 1927 when his play Mariana Pineda was firststaged. His initial book of poems Gypsy Ballads was published the following year. Duringa trip abroad, which also took him to England and Cuba, Lorca spent nine months in NewYork City beginning in June of 1929. His poems of that period were later collected in thevolume entitled Poet In New York. In 1931 Spain became a Republic which gave hope to many, Lorca included, that Spain'sstanda...
