Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Lorca! 'Pensive, merry, and near to the people
As a guitar, simple-hearted and responsive as a child
—His whole life was helpful and inspiring to others
And he earned his people's deep and lasting affection.'*
Lorca's love for his people, clear in his writings,
Met with a passionate response. His songs and ballads
Were quickly caught up all over revolutionary Spain.
The Fascist henchmen could never forgive
His popularity and devotion to the people.
They shot him and made a bonfire of his books
On Carmen Square in Granada.
'Fear not! This debt we shall repay!'**
Lorca's poetry, however, can never be silenced.
It will continue to blow as free as the wind
Over the wide spaces of heroic Spain.
Lorca, read, lives forever.

The poet has been turned into earth and silence,
Yet every day he dies and resuscitates in the heart of Spain
In the heart of the world . . .
Angel Lazaro is right when he cries:
'How was it that the murderers' bullets did not stop
Before that brow,
Below which the angels of verse
Sang a matchless music ?'
I think of that head struck to the ground,
The black lock fallen as though it wanted to go,
With the last stertor,
To the thread of recondite water
By his Andalusia.
I think of Lorca dead—he who stood upright
Like a young bull in the middle of the fields.
I think of the last terror of his pupils,
Those pupils that had known how to see
Unique colours and foreshortenings of wonder,
And thinking of that
I cannot utter any word but this:
Murderers ! Murderers !