The writer died while mixing with the rebels, these are
natural accidents of war . . . —Spanish Dictator Francisco FrancoThe country has to toughen up … part of the problem is nobody
wants to hurt each other anymore, right? —US president, Donald Trump
The Last Days of Federíco García Lorca
Federico in pajamas and blazer died at night
wearing the sudden-death clothes of a poet killed
because there’s nothing more dangerous to despots
than an artist who tells the day’s truth simply
because some force within insists.
Accepting death for being one’s self
is life’s condition of being one’s self
because to speak is to be.
This condition applies to all in all times
because nothing ever changes the insistence of love
& witness under any sky or sun.
Although the atmosphere of eras & place swings from
heaven to hell on a dime before the head-count has time
to blink, and because the intractable who paint “Guernica”
or write “Canto Libre” or “Satanic Verses”
(artists who dare) could well end with bullet-through-skull
because, to a despot, silence is golden (long-lived or brief)
because despots know that painters and poets,
sculptors and dancers will always speak
from momentary possession
because they’ve found the straightway
to the brainsoul of human-kind,
the place despots only enter
by means of fear & blood
which always mocks
the divine
Jim Culleny, 3/7/19 rev-2/22/2025
“head-count” meaning, “the people”,
during the period of the Roman Empire.
Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now.