Libreto cover design: "Cuerpo Presente" by Federico Garcia Lorca, translated into english by Roy Campbell "Body present"* may 2011

Cuerpo Presente" by Federico Garcia Lorca, translated into english by Roy Campbell

"Body present"

The stone is a forehead where dreams moan,

without winding waters or icy cypresses.

The stone is a shoulder to carry time

with trees of tears and ribbons and planets.

 

I have seen grey rains racing toward the waves,

lifting their gentle and wounded arms,

that they may not be trapped by the sloping stone

which shatters their limbs and soaks up no blood,

 

For the stone collects seeds and storm clouds,

but it gives forth no sounds, nor crystals, nor fire,

only plazas and plazas and more wall-less plazas

 

There on the stone lies the well-born Ignacio.

Now it is finished. What is happening? Look at this figure:

Death has covered him with a sulphur veil

and put on him the head of a dark minotaur.

 

Now it is finished. Rain falls in his mouth.

The last fleeting breath collapses his chest ,

and Love, drenched in tears of snow,

is warmed in the highlands of the ranches.

 

What are they saying? A sickening silence falls.

Before us his body is fading away,

a figure once firm and full of life

that now we see filling with bottomless wounds.

 

Who rumples the shroud? It is not true what they say!

No one is to sing here, not weep in the corner,

nor spur the horse, not freighten the serpent.

 

the libreto design is best seen on black

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Available for Request to License

 

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