You are going to ask: and where are the lilacs?
 and the poppy-petalled metaphysics?
 and the rain repeatedly spattering
 its words and drilling them full
 of apertures and birds?
 I'll tell you all the news.

 I lived in a suburb,
 a suburb of Madrid, with bells,
 and clocks, and trees.

 From there you could look out
 over Castille's dry face:
 a leather ocean.
 My house was called
 the house of flowers, because in every cranny
 geraniums burst: it was
 a good-looking house
 with its dogs and children.
 Remember, Raul?
 Eh, Rafel?         Federico, do you remember
 from under the ground
 my balconies on which
 the light of June drowned flowers in your mouth?
 Brother, my brother!
 Everything
 loud with big voices, the salt of merchandises,
 pile-ups of palpitating bread,
 the stalls of my suburb of Arguelles with its statue
 like a drained inkwell in a swirl of hake:
 oil flowed into spoons,
 a deep baying
 of feet and hands swelled in the streets,
 metres, litres, the sharp
 measure of life,
 stacked-up fish,
 the texture of roofs with a cold sun in which
 the weather vane falters,
 the fine, frenzied ivory of potatoes,
 wave on wave of tomatoes rolling down the sea.

 And one morning all that was burning,
 one morning the bonfires
 leapt out of the earth
 devouring human beings --
 and from then on fire,
 gunpowder from then on,
 and from then on blood.
 Bandits with planes and Moors,
 bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
 bandits with black friars spattering blessings
 came through the sky to kill children
 and the blood of children ran through the streets
 without fuss, like children's blood.

 Jackals that the jackals would despise,
 stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
 vipers that the vipers would abominate!

 Face to face with you I have seen the blood
 of Spain tower like a tide
 to drown you in one wave
 of pride and knives!

 Treacherous
 generals:
 see my dead house,
 look at broken Spain :
 from every house burning metal flows
 instead of flowers,
 from every socket of Spain
 Spain emerges
 and from every dead child a rifle with eyes,
 and from every crime bullets are born
 which will one day find
 the bull's eye of your hearts.

 And you'll ask: why doesn't his poetry
 speak of dreams and leaves
 and the great volcanoes of his native land?

 Come and see the blood in the streets.
 Come and see
 The blood in the streets.
 Come and see the blood
 In the streets!