Im Explaining a Few Things

    You are going to ask: and whe lilacs?

    and talled metaphysics?

    and tedly spattering

    its hem full

    of apertures and birds?

    Ill tell you all the news.

    I lived in a suburb,

    a suburb of Madrid, h bells,

    and clocks, and trees.

    From t

    over Castilles dry face:

    a leather ocean.

    My house was called

    the house of flowers, because in every cranny

    geraniums burst: it was

    a good-looking house

    s dogs and children.

    Remember, Raul?

    Eh, Rafel? Federico, do you remember

    from under the ground

    my balconies on which

    t of June droh?

    Brother!

    Everything

    loud  of merchandises,

    pile-ups of palpitating bread,

    talls of my suburb of Arguelles s statue

    like a drained inkwell in a swirl of hake:

    oil floo spoons,

    a deep baying

    of feet and reets,

    metres, litres, the sharp

    measure of life,

    stacked-up fish,

    texture of roofs h a cold sun in which

    ters,

    tatoes,

    omatoes rolling dohe sea.

    And one morning all t was burning,

    one morning the bonfires

    leapt out of th

    devouring human beings --

    and from then on fire,

    gunpohen on,

    and from then on blood.

    Bandits h planes and Moors,

    bandits h finger-rings and duchesses,

    bandits tering blessings

    came to kill children

    and treets

    fuss, like childrens blood.

    Jackals t the jackals would despise,

    stones t tle e on and spit out,

    vipers t te!

    Face to face he blood

    of Spain toide

    to drown you in one wave

    of pride and knives!

    treacherous

    generals:

    see my dead house,

    look at broken Spain :

    from every al flows

    instead of flowers,

    from every socket of Spain

    Spain emerges

    and from every dead ch eyes,

    and from every crime bullets are born

    which will one day find

    ts.

    And youll ask: w ry

    speak of dreams and leaves

    and t volcanoes of ive land?

    Come and see treets.

    Come and see

    treets.

    Come and see the blood

    In treets!