I am a fire in the fountain, I am a lantern
Swaying in sunset, I am the Four Corners
Facing in and facing out, I am a wind
That soothes bleeding, autumnal leaves,
I am eternal, my soul repeats itself like
A pattern. At night I extinguish in dreams
And smolder like the marble smoke of a star:
I am a fire in the fountain.

The woods call me to their solitude and
The city to its anguish. Sometimes heaven
Wounds me with every shard of sky;
Sometimes heaven glows beneath a lampshade.
Love sends me fleeing the Earth’s rotation
Or else has me melting at the center of it all.
My life is laid out like tile: a wild geometry
Crosses me from day to day and year to year.

I seek the mysticism of a narrow street,
Of applause, of thunderstorms, I seek
The melancholy that streaks like rain across
Dark crystal, I seek the peace that disappears
In the passion emblazoned on an apple skin,
That is a sand dune, half-shadow half-searing white,
I seek to possess the Earth like a King and give it away
Like a Saint, I hunger for food and to feed the hungry:

I ache for the fire in the fountain.

Written on Tuesday, September 21st, 2004 in Granada, Spain, the birthplace of the great poet, writer, dramatist and pianist Federico García Lorca