Leaping Lorca

Last summer the Santa Fe Opera commissioned me to create a piece on the Spanish poet Federico Garica Lorca. I worked with the PPDT and composed "LorcaLand." Here is one of the poems I wrote for the show.

Fuente Grande, Alfacar, Spain The Moors called Fuente Grande, Ainadamar, “The Fountain of Tears.” “Is it my separation from Ainadamar, stopping the pulsation of my blood, which has dried up the flow of tears from the well of my eyes?”
— Abul Barakat al Balafiqi circa AD 1372

Circles expanding on the face of the pond.
As if the surface were broken with rain.

Looking in I see the drops are falling up from the bottom.
A stream rising from the bed of rocks.

Rippling with tension, the steady boil of the rosary.
Flowing into each other a bead of tears.

Fuente Grande forever quenching thirsty dogs.
936 steps from the place of Lorca's execution.

Is this the way words appear breaking free into the mind?
The way kisses are brought into too scarce being?

How the surface of the sun makes yellow?
Where the moon mines her similes?

Gravity has no standing in this courtroom.
The Judge’s gavel is careening upward.

What law breakers the bubbles.
What sinners those molecules of want.

Who cannot answer the prayer of water?
Who does not regret this spilling of justice?