Gacela of the Dark Death
I want to sleep the sleep of apples,
I want to get far away from the busyness of cemeteries.
I want to sleep the sleep of that child
who longed to cut his heart open on the high seas.
I don't want to hear again how the corpse keeps all its blood,
how the decaying mouth goes on begging for water.
I don't want to learn the tortures of the grass,
nor of the moon with a serpents mouth
that labors before dawn.
I want to sleep for half a second,
a while, a minute, a century,
but all must know that I have not died;
that there is a stable of gold in my lips;
that I am the small friend of the west wing;
that I am the intense shadows of my own tears.
Cover me at dawn with a veil,
because dawn will throw fistfuls of ants at me,
and pour a little hard water over my shoes
so that the scorpion claws of dawn will slip off.
Because I want to sleep the sleep of apples,
to learn a lament that will cleanse me to earth;,
for I want to live with that dark child
who longed to cut his heart open on the high seas.
- Federico García Lorca