over a snout of blood
spilled on the sand, 70
and the bulls of Guisando,
partly death and partly stone,
bellowed like two centuries
sated with treading the earth.
No. 75
I do not want to see it!
I will not see it!
Ignacio goes up the tiers
with all his death on his shoulders.
He sought for the dawn 80
but the dawn was no more.
He seeks for his confident profile
and the dream bewilders him.
He sought for his beautiful body
and encountered his opened blood. 85
I will not see it!
I do not want to hear it spurt
each time with less strength:
that spurt that illuminates
the tiers of seats, and spills 90
over the corduroy and the leather
of a thirsty multitude.
Who shouts that I should come near!
Do not ask me to see it!
His eyes did not close 95
when he saw the horns near,
but the terrible mothers
lifted their heads.
And across the ranches,
an air of secret voices rose, 100
shouting to celestial bulls,
herdsmen of pale mist.
There was no prince in Seville
who could compare with him,
nor sword like his sword 105
nor heart so true.
Like a river of lions
was his marvellous strength,
and like a marble torso
his firm drawn moderation. 110
The air of Andalusian Rome
gilded his head
where his smile was a spikenard
of wit and intelligence.
What a great torero in the ring! 115
What a good peasant in the sierra!
How gentle with the sheaves!
How hard with the spurs!
How tender with the dew!
How dazzling in the fiesta! 120
How tremendous with the final
banderillasof darkness!
But now he sleeps without end.
Now the moss and the grass
open with sure fingers 125
the 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, 130
stumbling over a thousand hoofs
like a long, dark, sad tongue,
to form a pool of agony
close to the starry Guadalquivir.
Oh, white wall of Spain! 135
Oh, black bull of sorrow!
Oh, hard blood of Ignacio!
Oh, nightingale of his veins!
No.
I will not see it! 140
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. 145
No.
I will not see it!- The Laid Out Body
Stone is a forehead where dreams grieve
without curving waters and frozen cypresses.
Stone is a shoulder on which to bear Time 150
with trees formed of tears and ribbons and
planets.
I have seen grey showers move towards
the waves
raising their tender riddled arms,
to avoid being caught by the lying stone
which loosens their limbs without soaking the
blood. 155
For stone gathers seed and clouds,
skeleton larks and wolves of penumbra:
but yields not sounds nor crystals nor fire,
only bull rings and bull rings and more bull
rings without walls.
Now, Ignacio the well born lies on the stone. 160
All is finished. What is happening? Contem-
plate his face:
death has covered him with pale sulphur
and has placed on him the head of a dark
minotaur.
All is finished. The rain penetrates his mouth.
The air, as if mad, leaves his sunken chest, 165
and Love, soaked through with tears of snow,
warms itself on the peak of the herd.
What are they saying? A stenching silence settles
down.
We are here with a body laid out which fades
away,
with a pure shape which had nightingales 170
and we see it being filled with depthless holes.
Who creases the shroud? What he says is not true!
Nobody sings here, nobody weeps in the
corner,
nobody pricks the spurs, nor terrifies the
serpent.
Here I want nothing else but the round eyes 175
to see this body without a chance of rest.
Lament for Ignacio Sa ́nchez Mejı ́as