GACELAS

I
Gacela of Unexpected Love

No one understood the perfume
of the shadow magnolia of your belly.
No one knew you crushed completely
a human bird of love between your teeth.

There slept a thousand little persian horses
in the moonlight plaza of your forehead,
while, for four nights, I embraced there
your waist, the enemy of snowfall.

Between the plaster and the jasmines,
your gaze was a pale branch, seeding.
I tried to give you, in my breastbone,
the ivory letters that say ever.

Ever, ever: garden of my torture,
your body, flies from me forever,
the blood of your veins is in my mouth now,
already light-free for my death.

Federico García Lorca Translation by A. S. Kline