Take This Waltz : Issa's Sunday Service, #90

Photo by Lourdes Cardenal

Leonard Cohen recorded a gorgeous homage to Federico Garcia Lorca entitled "Take This Waltz," the lyrics of which are an English version of Garcia Lorca's poem "Pequeño vals vienés," and which is today's featured song on Issa's Sunday Service.  According to the website, Poetry Connection, in"1986 Leonard Cohen's English translation of the poem "Pequeño vals vienés" by Lorca reached #1 in the Spanish single charts."

The mystery of Garcia Lorca's death has never been solved - whether his killing was purely political or whether it was personal or some combination of both - though just two years ago, the story was back in the news when an unsuccessful attempt was made to find his grave.  In a previous edition of the Sunday Service, The Pogues sang of Garcia Lorca's horrific end in the song "Lorca's Novena," and posited that, before his killers were able to return and mutilate his body as planned, he simply got up and walked away.

So, Garcia Lorca walks on these many years later.  If you would find him, look in the lines of his poetry.

If you would find him, look in your heart.

Here are two fine brief examples of his exquisite work.

Debussy

My shadow glides in silence
over the watercourse.

On account of my shadow
the frogs are deprived of stars.

The shadow sends my body
reflections of quiet things.

My shadow moves like a huge
violet-colored mosquito.

A hundred crickets are trying
to gild the glow of the reeds.

A glow arises in my breast,
the one mirrored in the water.

Sonnet

I know that my profile will be serene
in the north of an unreflecting sky.
Mercury of vigil, chaste mirror
to break the pulse of my style.

For if ivy and the cool of linen
are the norm of the body I leave behind,
my profile in the sand will be the old
unblushing silence of a crocodile.

And though my tongue of frozen doves
will never taste of flame,
only of empty broom,

I'll be a free sign of oppressed norms
on the neck of the stiff branch
and in an ache of dahlias without end.

Federico Garcia Lorca

And here is the version of the poem recorded by Cohen:

Take This Waltz
Now in Vienna there's ten pretty women
There's a shoulder where death comes to cry
There's a lobby with nine hundred windows
There's a tree where the doves go to die
There's a piece that was torn from the morning
And it hangs in the Gallery of Frost

Aey, aey, aey, aey
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take this waltz with the clamp on its jaws

Oh I want you, I want you, I want you
On a chair with a dead magazine
In the cave at the tip of the lily
In some hallway where love's never been
On a bed where the moon has been sweating
In a cry filled with footsteps and sand

Aey, aey, aey, aey
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take its broken waist in your hand
This waltz, this waltz, this waltz, this waltz
With its very own breath of brandy and death
Dragging its tail in the sea

There's a concert hall in Vienna
Where your mouth had a thousand reviews
There's a bar where the boys have stopped talking
They've been sentenced to death by the blues
But who is it climbs to your picture
With a garland of freshly cut tears?

Aey, aey, aey, aey
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take this waltz it's been dying for years

There's an attic where children are playing
Where I've got to lie down with you soon
In a dream of Hungarian lanterns
In the mist of some sweet afternoon
And I'll see what you've chained to your sorrow
All your sheep and your lilies of snow

Aey, aey, aey, aey
Take this waltz, take this waltz
With its, I'll never forget you, you know
This waltz, this waltz, this waltz, this waltz
With its very own breath of brandy and death
Dragging its tail in the sea

And I'll dance with you in Vienna
I'll be wearing a river's disguise
The hyacinth wild on my shoulder
My mouth on the dew of your thighs
And I'll bury my soul in a scrapbook
With the photographs there, and the moss

And I'll yield to the flood of your beauty
My cheap violin and my cross
And you'll carry me down on your dancing
To the pools that you lift on your wrist
Oh my love, oh my love
Take this waltz, take this waltz
It's yours now, it's all that there is

Aey, aey, aey, aey

-------------------

And, finally, a fine live rendition of the song:

------------------------------------


This week's featured poem comes from Lilliput Review, #109, originally published in April 2000.   Enjoy.

Buried
   Buried in a pile
   of camellia petals:
   camellia petals.

   David Rosenthal

a new year--
the same nonsense
piled on nonsense

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

PS  Get 2 free issues     Get 2 more free issues     Lillie poem archive

Send a single haiku for the Wednesday Haiku feature.  Here's how.

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 90 songs

Hear 'em all at once on the the LitRock Jukebox

Subscribe to Lilliput Review