The Goring and The Death - Poetry by Lorca - recitation by Andy Garcia

The Goring and The Death or Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias,“ (1935) - Federico Garcia Lorca wrote about and for his beloved friend the well-known and excellent bull fighter, Mejias. The poem is a “deep song“ of grief. He repeats the line “at five in the afternoon“ 28 times in 52 lines, forecasting the bullfighter’s death with each knell of the repeat. The poem is a metaphor for the Spanish Civil War, and an eerie foreshadowing of García Lorca’s own tragic death two years later at the hands of the Franco’s regime. English translation of the poetry -------- At five in the afternoon. It was just five in the afternoon. A boy brought the white sheet at five in the afternoon. A basket of lime made ready at five in the afternoon. The rest was death and only death at five in the afternoon. The wind blew the cotton wool away at five in the afternoon. And oxide scattered nickel and glass at five in the afternoon. Now the dove and the leopard fight at five in the afternoon. And a thigh with a desolate horn at fiv