THE LYING IN STATE

The stone slab is a face where dreams moan
holding no curving waters, no frozen cypresses.
The stone slab is a back to carry Time
with weeping willows, ribbons and planets.

I have seen grey rains running up to the waves
lifting their tender, riddled arms,
so as not to be caught by the outstretched stone
which relaxes his limbs without soaking up his blood.

Because the stone gathers up seeds and clouds
skeletons of larks and wolves of the shadow;
but it does not give sounds, or crystals, or flre,
only arenas arenas and more arenas without walls.

Already the noble Ignacio is on the stone.
Already he has died; what is happening? Look at his face;
death has covered it with pale sulphur
and has given him the head of a dark minotaur.

Already he has died. The rain enters by his mouth.
The air leaves his sunken chest as if mad,
and Love, soaked through with tears of snow,
warms itself in the heights of the ranch lands.

What do they say? A stinking silence settles.
We are with a real body which is fading away,
a shining form which sheltered nightingales
and we saw it fill up with bottomless holes.

Who is wrinkling the shroud? It's not true, what he says!
Here nobody sings, nor weeps in the corner,
nor jabs the spurs, nor frightens the serpent.
Here I want no more than round eyes
to see that body, deprived of all rest.

I want to see here hard-voiced men.
Those who tame horses and harness rivers;
men whose strong bones resound and sing
men with mouths full of sun and flints.

I want to see them here. In front of the stone.
In front of this body with broken reins.
I want them to show me where is the way out
for this great captain, overawed by Death.

I want them to teach me a lament like a river
with sweet mists and high banks,
to carry away Ignacio's body and to pass on
without hearing the double snort of the bulls.

Let it lose itself in the round arena of the Moon,
who in her girlhood apes the sad, still bull;
let it lose itself in night without the fishes' song
and in the white weeds of frozen vapour.

I do not want them to cover the face with kerchiefs
so that they get used to the death which he bears.
See yourself, Ignacio: don't you hear the hot bellowing?
Sleep, fly away, rest. Even the sea must die!