The 25 best poems by Federico García Lorca

Born in Fuente Vaqueros, Federico García Lorca took his first inspiration from the natural landscapes of the place where he grew up, thus discovering his talent for lyrics and verses. His art was evolving and refining to the point of enchanting anyone who read or listened to them, thus becoming one of the icons of literature and poetry until the day of his tragic death in a shooting at the hands of Franco's forces during the start of the Civil War in 1936.

As a memory of his life and work, we have brought a compilation of the best poems by Federico García Lorca that we can enjoy at any time.

Best poems by Federico García Lorca

A passionate and humanitarian man in equal parts, who filled the world with beautiful, tragic and realistic combining metaphors and symbolism to represent the magnitude of the emotions embodied in the paper.

1. Malagueña

(Cante jondo poem)

Death

go in and out

from the tavern.

Black horses pass

and sinister people

through the deep roads

of the guitar.

And there is a smell of salt

and female blood,

in the feverish tuberose

of the Marine.

And death

go in and out

and goes out and goes in

death

from the tavern.

• This poem shows us how death haunts every part of the world without realizing it, while we remain oblivious to its latent but silent threat.

2. Sonnet of the Sweet Complaint

(Sonnets of dark love)

I'm afraid of losing the wonder

of your statue eyes, and the accent

that at night puts me on the cheek

the lonely rose of your breath.

I'm sorry to be on this shore

trunk without branches; and what I feel the most

is not having the flower, pulp or clay,

for the worm of my suffering.

If you are my hidden treasure,

if you are my cross and my wet pain,

if I am the dog of your lordship,

don't let me lose what I have gained

and decorate the waters of your river

with leaves of my alienated autumn.

• A dark romantic poem that shows us that, despite being in a relationship that causes us pain, we usually prefer to stay in it rather than leave it.

3. Absent soul

The bull and the fig tree do not know you,

neither horses nor ants from your house.

The child does not know you nor the afternoon

because you have died forever.

The back of the stone does not know you,

nor the black satin where you break.

Your silent memory does not know you

because you have died forever.

Autumn will come with shells,

mist grape and grouped monks,

but no one will want to look into your eyes

because you have died forever.

Because you have died forever

like all the dead on Earth,

like all the dead who are forgotten

in a bunch of dull dogs.

Nobody knows you. No. But I sing to you.

I sing for your profile and your grace later.

The distinguished maturity of your knowledge.

Your desire for death and the taste of your mouth.

The sadness that your brave joy had.

It will take a long time to be born, if it is born,

an Andalusian so clear, so rich in adventure.

I sing its elegance with words that groan

and I remember a sad breeze through the olive trees.

• It is sad when those who have passed away through the journeys of their lives, their joys or actions are not honored or remembered; but only the essence of death itself remains that has overtaken him.

4. The poet talks on the phone with love

Your voice watered the dune of my chest

in the sweet wooden cabin.

For the south of my feet it was spring

and to the north of my forehead a fern flower.

Light pine through the narrow space

sang without dawn and sowing

and my crying started for the first time

crowns of hope across the ceiling.

Sweet and distant voice poured by me.

Sweet and distant voice for me liked.

Distant and sweet deadened voice.

Far as a dark wounded deer.

Sweet as a sob in the snow.

Far and sweet in the marrow tucked!

• Hope is always born from every little act between people in love. Even if they are far from each other and can only create illusions of happiness in your mind.

5. Water, where are you going?

Water, where are you going?

Laughing I go down the river

on the shores of the sea.

Mar, where are you going?

Upriver I'm looking for

source where to rest.

Poplar, and you what will you do?

I don't want to tell you anything.

I... tremble!

What do I want, what do I not want,

by the river and by the sea?

(Four aimless birds

they are in the high poplar.)

• Intricate poem that tells us about the constant doubts that stick in our head about the decisions we have to make in life. Take risks or go in the opposite direction?

6. The poet's chest

You will never understand what I love you

because you sleep in me and you are asleep.

I hide you crying, persecuted

by a voice of piercing steel.

Norm that stirs equal meat and star

already pierces my aching chest

and the murky words have bitten

the wings of your severe spirit.

Group of people jump in the gardens

waiting for your body and my agony

in horses of light and green manes.

But keep sleeping, my love.

Hear my broken blood in the violins!

Look, they still stalk us!

• Another bleak love poem that reflects the struggle of lovers to live their love at the expense of those who condemn their union and try to separate them.

7. The kings of the deck

If your mother wants a king

the deck has four:

king of golds, king of cups,

king of spades, king of wands.

Run I get you,

run I grab you,

look i fill you

muddy face.

From the olive tree

I retire,

of esparto

I turn away

of the vine

I regret

of having loved you so much.

• One of Federico García Lorca's children's poems. Focused on the rhymes of his verses to make it easy to read.

8. Two moons in the afternoon

1

The moon is dead, dead;

but resurrects in the spring.

When in front of the poplars

the south wind curls.

When they give our hearts

your harvest of sighs.

When the roofs are put up

their grass hats.

The moon is dead, dead;

but resurrects in the spring.

2

The afternoon sings

a berceuse with oranges.

My little sister sings:

The earth is an orange.

The crying moon says:

I want to be an orange.

It cannot be, my daughter,

even if you turn pink.

Not even lemon.

What a pity!

• Sometimes we almost desperately seek to be someone else in order to be accepted, without realizing the immense potential we have in being ourselves.

9. Rider song

(Songs)

Cordova.

Distant and alone.

Black jackfruit, big moon

and olives in my saddlebag.

Although he knows the ways

I will never get to Córdoba.

Through the plain, through the wind,

black jackfruit, red moon.

Death is watching me

from the towers of Córdoba.

Oh, how such a long way!

Oh my brave jackfruit!

Oh that death awaits me,

before arriving in Córdoba!

Cordova.

Distant and alone.

• Here we can see the affection that Federico García Lorca had for this land to which he could never visit again, because he knew well that the hours of his life were numbered.

10. Singer cafe

Crystal lamps

and green mirrors.

On the dark platform,

the Parrala holds

a conversation

with death.

The flame,

does not come,

and calls her back.

The people

sniff the sobs.

And in the green mirrors,

long silk tails

they move.

• There are those who look forward to the moment of their departure from this world and even despair when it does not come soon.

11. Lullaby for Rosalía Castro, dead

(Six Galician poems)

Get up, girl friend,

that the roosters of the day are already crowing!

Get up, my beloved,

because the wind howls like a cow!

The plows come and go

from Santiago to Bethlehem.

From Belén to Santiago

an angel come in a boat.

A ship of fine silver

that brought pain from Galicia.

Galicia lying down and remains

full of sad herbs.

Herbs that cover your bed

with the black fountain of your hair.

Hair that goes to the sea

where the clouds stain their clear palms.

Get up, girl friend,

that the roosters of the day are already crowing!

Get up, my beloved,

because the wind howls like a cow!

• Poem in homage to Rosalía Castro, an exponent of Galician literature. This poem was inspired after Frederick visited her grave.

12. Rose Garland Sonnet

That garland! early! I'm dying!

Knit quickly! sings! Groan! sings!

that the shadow clouds my throat

and again comes and a thousand the light of January.

Between what you love me and what I love you,

star air and plant trembling,

thicket of anemones raises

with dark moan a whole year.

Enjoy the fresh landscape of my wound,

it breaks reeds and delicate streams.

Drink spilled blood on the thigh of honey.

But soon! That united, linked,

mouth broken with love and a bitten soul,

time will find us shattered.

• We must live life to the fullest, because we do not know when death will claim us. Therefore we must appreciate both joys and sorrows.

13. Love sores

This light, this devouring fire.

This grey scenary surrounds me.

This pain for just an idea.

This anguish of heaven, world and time.

This cry of blood that decorates

lyre without a pulse, lubricious tea.

This weight of the sea that hits me.

This scorpion that dwells on my chest.

They are a garland of love, a bed for the wounded,

where without sleep, I dream of your presence

among the ruins of my sunken chest.

And although I seek the summit of prudence

your heart gives me the valley

with hemlock and passion of bitter science.

• Heartbreaking verses that remind us of what it is like to love a person without being close to them. What feels like chains are dragged with the heart.

14. Madrigal

I looked into your eyes

when I was a kid and good.

Your hands brushed me

And you gave me a kiss.

(The clocks have the same cadence,

And the nights have the same stars.)

And my heart opened

Like a flower under the sky

The petals of lust

And the dream stamens.

(The clocks have the same cadence,

And the nights have the same stars.)

In my room I sobbed

Like the prince of the story

By Estrellita de oro

That she left the tournaments.

(The clocks have the same cadence,

And the nights have the same stars.)

I walked away from your side

Loving you without knowing it.

I don't know what your eyes are like

Your hands or your hair.

I only have it on my forehead

The butterfly of the kiss.

(The clocks have the same cadence,

And the nights have the same stars.)

• Poem that tells us about that first love that deeply impacts us and marks us in a way that no other will.

15. Long spectrum

Long spectrum of silver shaken

the night wind sighing,

opened my old wound with a gray hand

and she walked away: I was wanting.

Wound of love that will give me life

perpetual blood and pure light gushing forth.

Crack in which Filomela is mute

it will have forest, pain and a soft nest.

Oh what a sweet rumor in my head!

I will lie down next to the simple flower

where your beauty floats without a soul.

And the wandering water will turn yellow,

while my blood runs in the undergrowth

wet and smelly from the shore.

• Old wounds that are reopened, which sometimes it is necessary to feel in order to completely overcome them.

16. The Aurora

(Poet in New York)

The New York aurora has

four columns of silt

and a hurricane of black doves

that splash the rotten waters.

New York's aurora groans

down the huge stairs

searching between the edges

spikenard of drawn anguish.

The dawn arrives and no one receives it in their mouth

because there is no tomorrow or possible hope.

Sometimes the coins in angry swarms

they drill and devour abandoned children.

The first to come out understand with their bones

that there will be neither paradise nor leafless loves;

they know they go to the mire of numbers and laws

to games without art, to sweats without fruit.

The light is buried by chains and noises

in shameless challenge of rootless sciences.

In the neighborhoods there are people who waver insomniac

like fresh out of a shipwreck of blood.

• A poem referring to the city of New York, where Federico found a world enveloped in smoke and perpetual bricks, which flood and impoverish nature.

17. Outdoor dream casida

(Divan of the Tamarit)

Jasmine flower and slaughtered bull.

Infinite pavement. Map. Room. Harp. Sunrise.

The girl pretends a bull of jasmine

and the bull is a bloody twilight that roars.

If heaven were a little boy,

the jasmine would have half a dark night,

and the blue circus bull without fighters

and a heart at the foot of a column.

But the sky is an elephant

and jasmine is a bloodless water

and the girl is a night bouquet

across the vast dark pavement.

Between the jasmine and the bull

or ivory hooks or sleeping people.

In the jasmine an elephant and clouds

and in the bull the skeleton of the girl.

• As much as we want things to be different, we must accept reality and only then can we make a real change.

18. Ay, secret voice of dark love

Oh secret voice of dark love

Oh bleat without wool! Wounded!

Oh gall needle, sunken camellia!

Oh stream without sea, city without wall!

Oh immense night with a sure profile,

Heavenly mountain of anguish raised!

Oh silence without end, ripe lily!

Run away from me, hot voice of ice

don't want to lose me in the weeds

where flesh and heaven groan without fruit.

Leave the hard ivory from my head

have mercy on me, break my duel!

That I am love, that I am nature!

• An intricate poem full of metaphors about not being able to freely express your feelings towards your loved one.

19. In the ear of a girl

(Songs)

I did not want.

I didn't want to tell you anything.

I saw in your eyes

two crazy little trees.

Of breeze, of breeze and of gold.

They wiggled.

I did not want.

I didn't want to tell you anything.

• Sometimes people prefer to keep quiet about what they feel for another just to avoid causing misery.

20. If my hands could strip

I pronounce your name

in the dark nights,

when the stars come

to drink on the moon

and the branches sleep

of the hidden fronds.

And I feel hollow

of passion and music.

Crazy clock that sings

dead old hours.

I speak your name

in this dark night,

and your name sounds familiar to me

further away than ever.

Farther than all the stars

and more painful than the gentle rain.

Will I ever love you like then?

What is my heart's fault?

If the fog clears

What other passion awaits me?

Will it be calm and pure?

If my fingers could

defoliate the moon !!

• We can see in these verses the desperation to continue loving a finished love. And it is that what is experienced and the emotions that have arisen are not easy to overcome.

21. The poet asks his love to write to him

Love of my guts, long live death,

in vain I wait for your written word

and I think, with the flower that withers,

that if I live without me I want to lose you.

The air is immortal. The inert stone

neither knows the shadow nor avoids it.

Inner heart don't need

the frozen honey that the moon pours.

But I suffered you. I tore my veins

tiger and dove, on your waist

in a duel of bites and lilies.

So fill my madness with words

or let me live in my serene

night of the soul forever dark.

• Sometimes we wait for the other person to reciprocate our feelings with the same intensity as ours. But that is not always possible, and that is when the pain arises.

22. Dream

My heart rests next to the cold fountain.

(Fill it with your threads,

Oblivion spider).

The water from the fountain, her song told him.

(Fill it with your threads,

Oblivion spider).

My heart awakened, loves her, she said,

(Spider of silence,

Weave your mystery to him).

The water in the fountain heard him gloomy.

(Spider of silence,

Weave your mystery to him).

My heart turns to the cold fountain.

(White hands, far away,

Stop the waters).

And the water carries him away singing with joy.

(White hands, far away,

Nothing is left in the waters).

• Another poem full of metaphors that shows us a love tragedy, where despite exposing our feelings, the other person may decide to go with someone else.

23. It's true

Oh what work it costs me

love you like I love you!

For your love the air hurts me

the heart

and the hat.

Who would buy me

this headband that I have

and this sadness of thread

white, to make handkerchiefs?

Oh what work it costs me

love you like I love you!

• There are loves that hurt but at the same time we love them. Then the question arises as to whether to continue or to resign.

24. Romance of the moon, moon

(To Conchita García Lorca)

The moon came to the forge

With his bustle of tuberose.

The child looks at her, looks.

The boy is looking at her.

In the air moved

move the moon its arms

and teaches, lewd and pure,

her breasts of hard tin.

Run away moon, moon, moon.

If the gypsies came,

they would with your heart

white necklaces and rings.

Boy, let me dance.

When the gypsies come,

they will find you on the anvil

with the eyes closed.

Run away moon, moon, moon,

I already feel her horses.

-Boy, let me, don't step on

my starchy whiteness.

The rider was approaching

playing the drum of the plain.

Inside the forge the boy

his eyes are closed.

Through the olive grove they came,

bronze and dream, the gypsies.

Heads raised

and narrowed eyes.

How the zumaya sings,

Oh, how he sings in the tree!

the moon goes through the sky

with a child by the hand.

Inside the forge they cry,

screaming, the gypsies.

The air watches her, she watches.

The air is watching her.

• This beautiful and tragic poem tells the story of a dying gypsy boy and his delusions before leaving.

25. I have something to say I tell myself

I have to say something I tell myself

Words that dissolve in your mouth

Wings that are suddenly coat racks

Where the cry falls a hand grows

Someone kills our name according to the book

Who gouged out the statue's eyes?

Who placed this tongue around the

Crying?

I have something to say I tell myself

And I swell with birds on the outside

Lips that fall like mirrors Here

Inside there the distances meet

This north or this south is an eye

I live around myself

I'm here there between rungs of meat

Out in the open

With something to say I say to myself.

• We always have something to say but we are in the eternal search for the right time and place for it.