repeats again as the last line of both the stanza
and the section, effectively ending section 2
exactly as it began.
- The Laid Out Body
This section comprises twelve stanzas. All but
the seventh stanza are quatrains (four lines).
The seventh stanza is a quintet (five lines). The
section opens with the speaker stating that rock
is a brow where fantasies mourn sans rivers or
brooks and ice-covered trees. He says that rock
is the back upon which time passes and it is
carried along with trees made of crying and trim-
mings and worlds. The speaker says he has
looked at dark rains moving toward the ocean,
avoiding the duplicitous rock, which will tear the
rain apart. This is because the rock collects ker-
nels and the bones of birds and the wild dogs of
light and dark. Yet the rock does not give way to
noise or gems or flame, only to endless matador
arenas that exist without barriers.
Ignacio the noble now lays on rock. Every-
thing is over. The speaker asks what is occurring,
as if he is confused by what he has just described.
He says one should think about the matador’s
face; it has been filmed over with death. His head
has become that of the minotaur (a mythical
creature that is part man and bull). At the begin-
ning of the fifth stanza, the speaker repeats that
everything is over. Precipitation enters Ignacio’s
mouth, and the air has gone insane and escaped
the man’s lungs. Love, drenched with the crying
of the snow, gathers above the crowd.
This latter image returns the speaker to the
bullring. He wonders what the crowd is trying to
say. The quiet that lurked in the corners earlier in
the poem now pervades the bullring. All are
there with a body that will disappear, changing
from the visage of songbirds to something full of
endless punctures. The speaker asks about the
shroud; who will fold it? He refuses to believe
that Ignacio is dead; it cannot be the truth. The
only thing he wants is to see the matador alive
again. He would rather see evil men dead. The
speaker may also be indicating that he wants to
see the men who have cheated death, so that they
may tell Ignacio how to do the same.
The speaker wants these men to show him a
mournful song that is like a brook, one that will
carry Ignacio’s corpse to a place where it can rest
without being haunted by the cries of bulls. He
wants Ignacio’s body to find peace in the night
sky, in all manner of lyrical places. The speaker
does not want to see Ignacio’s face covered by
handkerchiefs. He does not want the matador to
feel that he is dead. Instead, he should slumber,
soar, and be at peace. Even the ocean passes
away, says the speaker.- Absent Soul
The final section of the poem is six stanzas; all
but the fifth are quatrains. As before, the anom-
alous stanza is a quintet. The bull (presumably
the one who has killed Ignacio) does not recog-
nize the matador. Horses, the vermin of his
house, the young, even the late day, they also
do not recognize him. It is because Ignacio is
gone for all eternity. The rock, the satin-lined
coffin in which the matador’s body decomposes,
even Ignacio’s own recollection of himself, they
do not recognize him because he is gone for all
eternity. Here, the fourth lines of the first two
quatrains repeat themselves. They repeat again
at the end of the third stanza and the beginning
of the fourth. The fall will come, the grapes will
be harvested, but nobody will gaze into Ignacio’s
eyes because he is gone for all eternity. Ignacio is
gone without end, just as all the dead who are no
longer remembered, all forgotten like a pile of
dead dogs. No one recognizes Ignacio, but the
speaker still sings about him (he addresses Igna-
cio directly, as he has through much of the
poem). The speaker does so for the sake of his-
tory, singing of the matador’s beauty and charm,
of his wisdom and lust for death, of the mourn-
fulness that was once his liveliness.
In the final stanza, the speaker states that a
great deal of time will pass before a Spaniard as
noble as Ignacio will be born, if at all. The
speaker says he declares the matador’s perfec-
tion with painful terms as he recalls olive trees
and a mournful wind moving through them.
THEMESThe Power and Permanence of Death
To say that death is permanent may be redun-
dant, but this aspect of mortality continues to be
one that challenges humanity, as is perhaps evi-
denced by the plethora of art and literature that
specifically addresses the finality of death. Most
world religions also attempt to address this
topic. In ‘‘Lament for Ignacio Sa ́nchez Mejı ́as,’’
the permanence of death is communicated in
several ways. Initially, it is addressed in theLament for Ignacio Sa ́nchez Mejı ́as