VIVA FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
This post is in remembrance of the great Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca. This writer “visited Lorca” at his death site on August 27, 2004 (Lorca is believe to have been killed in the opening weeks of the Spanish Civil War on either the 19th or 20th of August, 1936).
In late October, 2009, work was begun to exhume the grave of Lorca and several other victims of the Spanish Civil War he was buried with.
In my novel CHASING FREEDOM, I have FG Lorca in three important segments: one fictionalizes my visit to his grave site.
As a fellow poet who has read Lorca for many years, it was a heart-wrenching experience, to say the least.
Let me keep this succinct.
You can obtain my novel CHASING FREEDOM at such venues as www.amazon.com and www.bn.com
You may read exerpts at www.books.google.com
Simply enter CHASING FREEDOM By Paul Heidelberg
And then search for such things as
Federico Garcia Lorca
and
Lorca poem.
Here is that poem that is one of the poems I put into my book.
As an artist – literary or visual or an artist involved with composing music – one creates work “feverishly” if it is good – and then leaves it behind to go onto other things.
I left CHASING FREEDOM behind several years ago and have gone onto other projects, but the book, I am now reminded, and Lorca, because of his great art, live on. (Update on novel: As of September, 2011, CHASING FREEDOM is now available as an eBook at such places as www.amazon.com and www.bn.com)
VIVA FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
Here is the poem from www.paulheidelberg.com
Selected Poetry 2004-2005
page (at the top of that page you will find a photograph of this writer/poet at the Lorca Death Site).
At this blog, you will see photos including the photo that was the genesis for the “light in the mirror” lines in the poem below. There is also a photo taken at the Fountain of Tears, located about 500 yards from the spot where Lorca is believed to have been killed and buried. The pond-like Fountain of Tears, was so named by Muslim poets 1,000 years ago, as bubbles that rise to the surface of the spring reminded them of tears (I just noticed on this photo you can see the bubbles rising to the surface at the fountain).
I say:
“Tears for Federico”
POR FEDERICO, AGOSTO 2004
Hola Lorca:
I was there
at the Fountain of Tears
yesterday,
and today
I can imagine
your spirit
in the clear, cool waters
between
plants of
brilliant shades of green,
standing and swaying
alive in the water,
moving with the bubbles of tears;
it is a pretty place,
one could have
a worse place –
and,
you have your mountains
and olive trees,
moons,
when the nights are right.
You died
ten miles,
as the eagle flies,
from your birthplace,
where your younger spirit
erupted from the mirror
by the piano –
a huge arc
of light
shooting across
your photograph,
and,
a ghostly image
of a face,
forever frozen
on the wall.
