300 Rosas Morenas

Your white shirt has grown thirsty dark brown roses. Your blood oozes and flees around the corners of your sash. [...] Let me climb up, at least, up to the high balconies; Let me climb up! Let me, up to the green balconies.*

He came from the port of the city of Cabra. God knows what happened to him, or whose path he crossed, to give him bloody red roses oozing through the white cotton of his shirt. He had to return, it's been too long. It's dark, the air smells of green wind and green branches. Somewhere in the distance he senses her waiting, but at the same time there's something sinister in that waiting. He can feel a strange taste of bile, mint and basil in his mouth. 

It's not his time anymore, he feels as if he's there on borrowed moments, belonging to nobody. He looks up along the greenery, the overgrown rumbled down house. He thinks he can see her crossing the balcony and stopping by the wrought iron railings. He imagines her swaying her hips forward, gently, just enough that she can rest along the railings, waiting. He feels ivy, iron and stone beneath his fingers as he climbs.

He looks up and sees stars, millions of them, coming together in a giant spiral, closing into a circle, green and red and silver. The moon becomes a big green moth. He feels weightless. Just before he closes his eyes, the moth's reflection dances on the water. 

*  Romance Sonambulo; From The Selected Poems of Federico García Lorca, translated by William Logan. (via)

*

Tristo temno rjavih vrtnic se ti po naprsju plete. Tvoja srčna kri prenika in ti odišavlja ledje. [...] Pusti vsaj mi za ograje, gor visoko naj povzpnem se, pusti, pusti me, da splezam za ograje te zelene.*

Prišel je iz pristanišča v mestu Cabra. Bog ve kaj se mu je zgodilo ali komu je prekrižal pot, da skozi bel bombaž njegove srajce mezijo temne krvavo rdeče vrtnice. Moral se je vrniti, predolgo je že bilo. Tema je. Zrak diši po zelenem vetru in zelenih vejah. V daljavi jo čuti kako čaka. Nekaj zloveščega je v tem čakanju. Čuden okus žolča, mete in bazilike se mu nabere v ustih.

Počuti se kot da bi živel v izposojenem času, trenutkih, ki ne pripadajo nikomur. Pogleda navzgor, vzdolž zelenja, ki oklepa razpadajočo hišo. Zdi se mu, da jo vidi kako se sprehodi preko balkona in se ustavi ob ograji iz kovanega železa. Predstavlja si kako z boki zaniha naprej, čisto rahlo, ravno dovolj, da se nasloni na ograjo ... in čaka. Medtem ko pleza pod prsti čuti bršljan, železo in kamen.

Ko zadnjič pogleda navzgor, se nešteto zvezd združi v ogromno spiralo, ki se zapre v krog, zelen, rdeč in srebrn. Luna postane velika zelena vešča. Tik preden zapre oči, veščin odsev zapleše na vodi. 

* Federico Garcia Lorca, Mesečniška romanca. Prevod: Aleš Berger