Dawn

By Federico Garcia Lorca




Dawn in New York has
Four columns of mire...
And a hurricane of black pigeons
Splashing in the putrid water.


Dawn in New York groans
On enormous fire escapes
Searching between the angles
For spikenards of drafted anguish.


Dawn arrives and no one receives it in his mouth
Because tomorrow and hope are impossible there:
Sometimes the furious swarming coins
Penetrate like drills and devour abandoned children.


Those who go out early know in their bones
There will be no paradise or loves that bloom and die:
They know they will be mired in numbers and laws,
In mindless games, in fruitless labors.


The light is buried under chains and noises
In an impudent challenge of rootless science.
And crowds stagger sleeplessly through the boroughs
As if they had just escaped a shipwreck of blood