Songs About People # 570 Federico Garcia Lorca

And the other great song from that album, Hell's Ditch. The Spanish poet, killed by Franco's troops in the Civil War, though his body was never found, a fact the song references. Also the subject, (at least partially) of The Clash's Spanish Bombs and an album of Tim Buckley's.

And here, to link in with my 'moon cycle' is his poem Ballad of the Moon Moon:

'Moon came to the forgein her petticoat of nard

The boy looks and looks

the boy looks at the Moon

In the turbulent air

Moon lifts up her arms

showing — pure and sexy — 

her beaten-tin breasts

Run Moon run Moon Moon

If the gypsies came

white rings and white necklaces

they would beat from your heart

Boy will you let me dance — 

when the gypsies come

they’ll find you on the anvil

with your little eyes shut

Run Moon run Moon Moon

I hear the horses’ hoofs

Leave me boy! Don’t walk

on my lane of white starch
The horseman came beating

the drum of the plains

The boy at the forge

has his little eyes shut

Through the olive groves

in bronze and in dreams

here the gypsies come

their heads riding high

their eyelids hanging low

How the night heron sings

how it sings in the tree

Moon crosses the sky

with a boy by the hand

At the forge the gypsies

cry and then scream

The wind watches watches

the wind watches the Moon'