Children Playing in a Square by a Fountain, Antonio Machado

In songs of the past
on the lips of the children,
confused is the story
but clear is the pain,
as clear as the water,
preserving the wisdom
of lovers whose names
now no longer remain.

They played in the square
where the old men were watching
whose voices once too
held the ancient refrain;
the splash of the fountain
repeated the cadence;
confused is the story
but clear is the pain.

They sang at their games
of the sorrows of lovers,
events unexpected
or looked-for in vain,
of tears without bitterness,
smiles without laughter;
confused is the story
but clear is the pain.

The shadows grew darker.
The children dispersed.
Their homes promised supper;
the sky threatened rain.
The fountain continued
repeating the cadence.
It washed out the story,
recounted the pain.

- Antonio Machado, “Yo escucho los cantos”, 1907

San Miguel, by Federico García Lorca

Granada
A Diego Buigas de Dalmau

You can see them from the railings,
on the mountain, mountain, mountain,
mules and mule-shaped shadows,
laden with sunflowers.

They walk the shaded slope,
their eyes with night-fog clouded.
In the salt air's corners
the daybreak creaks around them.

White mules cross the sky,
their quicksilver eyes shrouded,
one encore for the night's heart
in the still dawn hour.
And you dare not touch the water,
for the air's so cold around it.
The mad, uncovered water
on the mountain, mountain, mountain.

*

San Miguel, arrayed in lace
in the bedroom of his tower,
shows his exquisite legs
with the lamplight wrapped around them.

Domesticated angel
with an apostolic outline,
feathered like a nightingale,
sweetly feigning outrage.
Miguel sings in the glass;
a youth of nights three thousand.
The sweet smell of cologne
this far off from the flowers.

*

The waves dance on the beach
to the verandas' roundel.
The reeds give way to voices
among the moon's houses.
Along come women eating
the seeds of the sunflowers;
their buttocks, copper planets;
their skirts, the night sky clouded.
Along come noble knights
and ladies of sad countenance,
dark-eyed for the nightingales
of spring and how they sounded.

And the Bishop of Manila,
saffron-blind and poor, pronounces
a Mass, half male, half female,
double-edged and doubly mounted.

*

Miguel stirs not a limb
in the bedroom of his tower,
his skirts of little mirrors
glittering around him.

San Miguel, king of balloons,
odd numbers, lonely towers,
and a Berber caravan
full of argument and shouting.

To a Cat, by Jorge Luis Borges

No quieter is the image in the mirror,
nor does the dawn arrive more furtively
than, underneath the moon, this creeping panther
that from afar is granted us to see.
Remoter than the Ganges or the sunset,
you vanish, hidden by decree divine;
yours is the solitude, and yours the secret;
you seek us, or we look for you in vain.
Your haunches condescend to the delinquent
touch of my fingertips. You understand,
from some eternal place, unknown but ancient,
the love contained in the mistrustful hand.
Elsewhere in time you live. You reign supreme,
lord of a desert bounded like a dream.

- Jorge Luis Borges, "A un gato", 1972