Federico García Lorca was one of Spain’s finest poets. Assassinated by Fascists in August 1936 soon after the start of the Spanish Civil War his death should remind us of the dangers of fascism as it rises once again, not just in Spain where I’m writing this but across the world.
So here is a poem for World Poetry Day.
Lorca’s resting place has never been found. But the graves of many who lost their lives under Franco have been and their remains returned to their families. I was struck that among the possessions retrieved from the most recently found bodies was a pencil. So I used that as my starting point for this work of imagination. What last words would Lorca’s pencil have written in the hours – at most days – between his detention and his death?
Lorca’s Pencil
Vete a la mierda, Lorca
Fuck you Lorca
Fuck your words
Fuck your poesia
And fuck your queer ways
The pencil cracked more softly than the bullet though hurt me more. The broken end thrust thus in my poet’s eye.
Yet stabbed and shot
To die I worry not
As I had not worried to be born.
This unmarked grave like my fly-leaved crib
Hojas en blanco continuará
Blank sheets to be filled.
Poetry cannot be stilled.
This pencil unearthed will pick up its path:
In Spain the dead are more alive than the dead of any other country.
And I am more alive than ever
My words illuminate the darkness.
My pencil points the way.
Lee mis palabras
Read my words
Remember my words
Recite my words
But never reject them
My unconcealed weapon is truly mightier than the sword (it’s what scared them so and put me here)
Behold this arch-enchanter’s wand
Itself a nothing (to borrow Bulwer-Lytton)
But taking sorcery from my master hand (as he has written)
To paralyse my seizers.
And to strike them breathless
Take away the sword
Freedom can be saved without it!
El futuro es tuyo para escribirlo
The future is yours to write, so
Escribelo bien
Write it well.
A reading of Ian Gibson’s meticulous Lorca biography makes it clear that the poet’s actual last words were more prosaic than I had imagined. They read: “Father please give this man a donation of 1000 pesetas for the Army” and were in a note – perhaps forcibly written – delivered to his family by one of the Black Squad (executioners for the Fascists). Lorca’s father paid the money in the vain hope it might secure his son’s release. But by this time Lorca was almost certainly already dead and it was a cruel extortion. Don Federico kept the note in his wallet until he died in exile in New York nine years later.