Federico García Lorca: A thousand butterfly skeletons sleep within my walls.

“The artist, and particularly the poet, is always an anarchist in the best sense of the word. He must heed only the call that arises within him from three strong voices: the voice of death, with all its foreboding, the voice of love and the voice of art.”
― Federico García Lorca

“I put my head
out of my window and see
how much the wind’s knife
wants to slice it off.
On this unseen
guillotine, I’ve placed
the eyeless head
of all my desires.”
― Federico García Lorca

“To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves.”
― Federico García Lorca, Blood Wedding and Yerma

“To see you naked is to recall the Earth.”
― Federico García Lorca

“But hurry, let's entwine ourselves as one, our mouth broken, our soul bitten by love, so time discovers us safely destroyed.”
― Federico García Lorca

“I've often lost myself,
in order to find the burn that keeps everything awake”
― Federico García Lorca

“Never let me lose the marvel
of your statue-like eyes, or the accent
the solitary rose of your breath
places on my cheek at night.

I am afraid of being, on this shore,
a branchless trunk, and what I most regret
is having no flower, pulp, or clay
for the worm of my despair.

If you are my hidden treasure,
if you are my cross, my dampened pain,
if I am a dog, and you alone my master,

never let me lose what I have gained,
and adorn the branches of your river
with leaves of my estranged Autumn.”
― Federico García Lorca

“I know there is no straight road
No straight road in this world
Only a giant labyrinth
Of intersecting crossroads”
― Federico García Lorca

“I am the immense shadow of my tears”
― Federico García Lorca

“Only mystery allows us to live, only mystery.”
― Federico García Lorca

“Today in my heart
a vague trembling of stars
and all roses are
as white as my pain.”
― Federico García Lorca

“At the heart of all great art is an essential melancholy.”
― Federico García Lorca

“As I have not worried to be born, I do not worry to die.”
― Federico García Lorca

“We're all curious about what might hurt us.”
― Federico García Lorca

“A light which lives on what the flames devour,
a grey landscape surrounding me with scorch,
a crucifixion by a single wound,
a sky and earth that darken by each hour,
a sob of blood whose red ribbon adorns
a lyre without a pulse, and oils the torch,
a tide which stuns and strands me on the reef,
a scorpion scrambling, stinging in my chest--
this is the wreath of love, this bed of thorns
is where I dream of you stealing my rest,
haunting these sunken ribs cargoed with grief.
I sought the peak of prudence, but I found
the hemlock-brimming valley of your heart,
and my own thirst for bitter truth and art.

- Stigmata of Love”
― Federico García Lorca

“The night above. We two. Full moon.
I started to weep, you laughed.
Your scorn was a god, my laments
moments and doves in a chain.
The night below. We two. Crystal of pain.
You wept over great distances.
My ache was a clutch of agonies
over your sickly heart of sand.
Dawn married us on the bed,
our mouths to the frozen spout
of unstaunched blood.
The sun came through the shuttered balcony
and the coral of life opened its branches
over my shrouded heart.

- Night of Sleepless Love”
― Federico García Lorca

“Pero yo ya no soy yo
Ni mi casa es ya mi casa.

But now I am no longer I,
nor is my house any longer my house.”
― Federico García Lorca

“My head is full of fire
and grief and my tongue
runs wild, pierced
with shards of glass.”
― Federico García Lorca, Three Tragedies: Blood Wedding, Yerma, Bernarda Alba

“In Spain the dead are more alive than the dead of any other country in the world.”
― Federico García Lorca

“If blue is dream
what then innocence?
What awaits the heart
if Love bears no arrows?”
― Federico García Lorca

“In the green morning
I wanted to be a heart.
A heart.

And in the ripe evening
I wanted to be a nightingale.
A nightingale.

(Soul,
turn orange-colored.
Soul,
turn the color of love.)

In the vivid morning
I wanted to be myself.
A heart.

And at the evening's end
I wanted to be my voice.
A nightingale.

Soul,
turn orange-colored.
Soul,
turn the color of love.

- Ditty of First Desire”
― Federico García Lorca, Selected Verse

“The night below. We two. Crystal of pain.
You wept over great distances.
My ache was a clutch of agonies
over your sickly heart of sand.”
― Federico García Lorca, Selected Poems

“I can’t listen to you. I can’t listen to your voice. It’s as though I’d drunk a bottle of anise and fallen asleep wrapped in a quilt of roses. It pulls me along – and I know I’m drowning – but I go on down.”
― Federico García Lorca, Bodas de sangre

“The round silence of night,
one note on the stave
of the infinite.

Ripe with lost poems,
I step naked into the street.
The blackness riddled
by the singing of crickets:
sound,
that dead
will-o'-the-wisp,
that musical light
perceived
by the spirit.

A thousand butterfly skeletons
sleep within my walls.

A wild crowd of young breezes
over the river.

- Hour of Stars (1920)”
― Federico García Lorca

“If I told you the whole story it would never end...What's happened to me has happened to a thousand woman.”
― Federico García Lorca, Dona Rosita la soltera