In lieu of a post today, here’s a link to my poem “West Chop,” which was just published in a Martha’s Vineyard literary magazine called the Wampum Collection. It begins:

Tethered sailboats hunched in a row.
A gull sails the diagonal, taut and low.
Wind and sinking sun scribble the bay
With fleeting streaks of blue, green, gray.

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José: We just killed Federico García Lorca!

Juan: We left him in a ditch and I fired two bullets into his arse for being a queer.”*

Amando: You killed Lorca? You and the corporal here?

José (nodding): I was there. I would have shot him, too, if the captain hadn’t already wasted two bullets.

Amando pulls a revolver from his coat and rests the grip on the table, pointing the muzzle between the two men.

Amando: You murdered him because you hated him?

Juan: We executed him to cleanse the nation.

Amando: If there was justice, I would march you to the police station to be tried for murder.

Juan: There is justice. It was done.

Amando: It is my duty to try you, and to punish you, because this is the only room where that can possibly happen now. You confess that you murdered Lorca?

José [rising]: I will go into the village and find soldiers. This man is crazy.

Amando shoots José in the chest and points the revolver directly at Juan.

Amando: Your end will the the same as his, but I will give you time to think about it first. He escaped fear and regret; you will not. We will wait.

A long time passes. The old clock ticks. Some hay blows in under the door.

Amando: You should pray.

Juan: Autumn will come with snails,
misted grapes and bunches of hills
but no one will watch your eyes
because you have died forever.

Amando: What! How do you know those words?

Juan: They were Lorca’s last. He said them in the ditch. They made an impression on me.

Amando: You believe that I cannot shoot you now, because you said those lines?

Juan: You cannot.

Amando: If I let you go, you will be boasting and laughing by midnight.

Juan: You cannot shoot me now.

*Real words, quoted by Jeremy Edelman, The New York Review, June 5, 2014

The post a little play for Lorca appeared first on Peter Levine.

Twelve centuries ago by a long Swiss lake,
Pangur Bán hunted and an Irish monk looked.
The monk strained for sense from knotty old books;
His Celtic cat stared at the rustling rocks.
The cat was sharper and more often struck,
But both loved the chase, and the monk loved his pet.
Twelve centuries later my dog and I
Walk Cambridge streets lost in separate thought.
He stops to sniff trails; I check my emails.
Sensing a modern mouse has scurried by,
He jingles his tags and trots on while I
Shake off my inbox, walk, and concentrate.
The monk’s name is lost. The name Pangur Bán
Lives on, but I assume it was only the man
Who saw the analogy of monk and pet
And put it in verse that speaks to us still. Yet
Could it be my dog and the long-passed cat
Who knew the truth? We all just do what
We’re made to do, and it’s better to do
It together. (Pangur Bán’s mice knew that too.)

Cf. the 9th-century Irish poem as translated by Robin Flower (“The Scholar and His Cat“) and by Seamus Heaney (as “Pangur Bán”); and see the Wikipedia entry for context.

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From Robert G. Hendricks, The Poetry of Han-Shan: A Complete, Annotated Translation of Cold Mountain:

From J. P. Seaton, Cold Mountain Poems: Zen Poems of Han Shan, Shih Te, and Wang Fan-chih:

And me, using their versions to attempt a third:

Murky places here, dim shapes.
No cause of that motion;
Blurry for no reason.
Whose name do the streams sob?
What agitates the clouds?
Staring until noon,
I realize the day’s dawned.

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“O aid me ere I err!” bade he.
“Nay, nay, I’ll not,” said she.
“I’ll aid ye not–you’re overwrought,” she sputtered in her tea.
“Avail me, please, I’m on my knees,”
Beseeched the lad, awailing.
“Peace,” said she, “your tears they’ll be completely unavailing.”
“I am,” said he, “a wretched me, with only this petition …”
“Your prayer,” said she, “moves not me, nor will I grant permission
To drip upon my tattered shoe your salty drops o’ woe.”
“I’d only note,” the laddie quote, a-pointing to his toe,
“That you have ta’en seat upon a steamin’ pot ‘o stew.
Underneath that very pot is set a hot fondue
And as you settle in, you see, the one flows in t’other
And both begin to drip upon my only little brother.
As he shakes, our boat it quakes, and o’er the gunnels flow
The last of the drips off the honeyed lips o’ the Bonghi-Donghi-Do.”
“Cease!” cried she. “Prattle not. I care not what you say.
I’ll sit right here and pull yer ear and watch the driplets flow.
I care not a wit for the Bonghi-Do; let him do what ere he may!”

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