On a statue of Federico García Lorca

 

In a Madrid plaza, Federico García Lorca stands

In stone, a stone dove flutters in his hands

And tourists take their snapshots

The real García Lorca, the flesh and bone man, was shot

And his body tossed in an unknown ditch to rot

And fertilize the flowers of modern Spain

And in that statuary plaza in Madrid, in Castilian sun and rain

A leftist daily puts a red ribbon round the statue-neck in vain

As a Fascist daily cuts the ribbon down

In two gestures by old guards who plant and resurrect him from the ground

García Lorca smiles as the old war rages with neither blood nor sound

And the birds shit on his statuary head

The people want to rescue Lorca’s body and put it with the noble dead

But can’t remember what patch of flowered earth became his bed

And so reverently clean the birdshit off his statue head

For what is dead is dead, and cannot be undead, and memories remain instead

In the gestures of the old guards who put and cut the ribbon near his head

That noble ribbon, taken at night and in the morning glowing red

R. R. Shea