Thirty Spanish Poems of Love and Exile by Raphael Alberti

Like the choir of crickets singing to the moon. I disdain the ballads of those tenors hollow Have cut old roses from the garden of Ronsard,īut I dislike the rouge of current cosmetics,Īnd am no chirping bird in the latest garb I love beauty, and true to modern esthetics I am, in the good meaning of the word, good. Yet I was struck by Cupid's dart have beenĬoursing my veins are drops of Jacobinic blood,īut my poetry springs from a serene fountain Īnd more than an upright man who knows his doctrine. My youth, twenty years on the soil of Castile īy now you know my plain, almost monkish dress. My childhood is memories of a patio in SevilleĪnd a bright orchard where lemon trees ripen He is overheard talking to himself, and sometimes even singing. There, in the Palacio de las Dueñas, is his father’s study. They smell faintly of tuberose and carnations, and there the pale-yellow lemons grow under the blinding, scorching sun.

And there, in the past, are the courtyards in which Abuela Cipriana sang ballads and favorite folk songs. But these first steps are warm on Andalusian soil, and soon it becomes nostalgia-as happiness is something that always occurs in the past. She does not realize this now, but the body she holds in her arms will one day be lifted over hers, lifeless, in a hotel room in France, after many travelled roads.

The summer breeze of Sevilla joins the past and future in Ana’s hands it is her namesake day, the feast day of Saint Anne. The fountains fall silent, the flowerpots watch, the night is still. His cry breaks the silence of the idyllic scene. At 4:30 in the morning, in the Palacio de las Dueñas, a baby boy is born, Antonio.

Thirty Spanish Poems of Love and Exile by Raphael Alberti