Landscape of a Vomiting Multitude

Landscape of a Vomiting Multitude

The fat lady came out first,

tearing out roots and moistening drumskins.

The fat lady

who turns dying octopuses inside out.

The fat lady, the moons antagonist,

was running through the streets and deserted buildings

and leaving tiny skulls of pigeons in the corners

and stirring up the furies of the last centuries feasts

and summoning the demon of bread through the skys clean-swept hills

and filtering a longing for light into subterranean tunnels.

The graveyards, yes the graveyards

and the sorrow of the kitchens buried in sand,

the dead, pheasants and apples of another era,

pushing it into our throat.

There were murmuring from the jungle of vomit

with the empty women, with hot wax children,

with fermented trees and tireless waiters

who serve platters of salt beneath harps of saliva.

Theres no other way, my son, vomit! Theres no other way.

Its not the vomit of hussars on the breasts of their whores,

nor the vomit of cats that inadvertently swallowed frogs,

but the dead who scratch with clay hands

on flint gates where clouds and desserts decay.

The fat lady came first

with the crowds from the ships, taverns, and parks.

Vomit was delicately shaking its drums

among a few little girls of blood

who were begging the moon for protection.

Who could imagine my sadness?

The look on my face was mine, but now isnt me,

the naked look on my face, trembling for alcohol

and launching incredible ships

through the anemones of the piers.

I protect myself with this look

that flows from waves where no dawn would go,

I, poet without arms, lost

in the vomiting multitude,

with no effusive horse to shear

the thick moss from my temples.

The fat lady went first

and the crowds kept looking for pharmacies

where the bitter tropics could be found.

Only when a flag went up and the first dogs arrived

did the entire city rush to the railings of the boardwalk.

Federico García Lorca