fallen verses

Fallen Verses: The Bilingual Post

The Fires of Granada

after Lorca

¿Quién te querría como yo,
si me cambrias el Corazón?

Oh Spanish dancer, it is the fires of the Bolero in your Andalusian eyes,
The furnaces of Toledo heating the stage and the sound of anvils:
Your feet slamming the oak boards in a flamenco dream.

¿Quién te querría como yo,
si me cambrias el Corazón?

Oh Spanish dancer, it is your sister beside you, as fair of face,
As much an inferno of the Spanish hillside in the bloody sunset.
How can any man, sitting in the audience, clap for only one of you?

No one would love you like me
if you’d only change my heart!

Oh Spanish dancers, flit your skirts on the guitar’s six airs.
Let them flit to me and sleep peacefully on my floor.
Only do this quietly, quietly, so it will not wake my wife.

***

The Spanish from “Three Portraits with Shading: Bacchus” from Songs, 1921-1924, translated by Alan S. Trueblood.