1.
Cogida and
At five in the afternoon.
It was exactly five in the afternoon.
A boy brought the white sheetat five in the afternoon.
A trail of lime ready preparedat five in the afternoon.
The rest was death, and death alone.
The wind carried away the cottonwoolat five in the afternoon.
And the oxide scattered crystal and nickelat five in the afternoon.
Now the dove and the leopard wrestleat five in the afternoon.
And a thigh with a desolated hornat five in the afternoon.
The bass-string struck upat five in the afternoon.
Arsenic bells and smokeat five in the afternoon.
Groups of silence in the cornersat five in the afternoon.
And the bull alone with a high heart!
At five in the afternoon.
When the sweat of snow was comingat five in the afternoon,when the bull ring was covered with iodineat five in the afternoon.
Death laid eggs in the woundat five in the afternoon.
At five in the afternoon.
At five o'clock in the afternoon.
A coffin on wheels is his bedat five in the afternoon.
Bones and flutes resound in his earsat five in the afternoon.
Now the bull was bellowing through his foreheadat five in the afternoon.
The room was iridescent with agonyat five in the afternoon.
In the distance the gangrene now comesat five in the afternoon.
Horn of the lily through green groinsat five in the afternoon.
The wounds were burning like sunsat five in the afternoon.
At five in the afternoon.
Ah, that fatal five in the afternoon!
It was five by all the clocks!
It was five in the shade of the afternoon!2.
The Spilled BloodI will not see it!
Tell the moon to come,for I do not want to see the bloodof Ignacio on the sand.
I will not see it!
The moon wide open.
Horse of still clouds,and the grey bull ring of dreamswith willows in the barreras.
I will not see it!
Let my memory kindle!
Warm the jasminesof such minute whiteness!
I will not see it!
The cow of the ancient worldpassed her sad tongueover a snout of bloodspilled on the sand,and the bulls of Guisando,partly death and partly stone,bellowed like two centuriessated with threading the earth.
No.
I will not see it!
Ignacio goes up the tierswith all his death on his shoulders.
He sought for the dawnbut the dawn was no more.
He seeks for his confident profileand the dream bewilders
He sought for his beautiful bodyand encountered his opened
Do not ask me to see it!
I do not want to hear it spurteach time with less strength:the spurt that illuminatesthe tiers of seats, and spillsover the corduroy and the leatherof a thirsty multitude.
Who shouts that I should come near!
Do not ask me to see it!
His eyes did not closewhen he saw the horns near,but the terrible motherslifted their heads.
And across the ranches,an air of secret voices rose,shouting to celestial bulls,herdsmen of pale mist.
There was no prince in Sevillawho could compare to him,nor sword like his swordnor heart so true.
Like a river of lionswas his marvellous strength,and like a marble torsohis firm drawn moderation.
The air of Andalusian Romegilded his headwhere his smile was a spikedof wit and intelligence.
What a great torero in the ring!
What a good peasant in the sierra!
How gentle with the sheaves!
How hard with the spurs!
How tender with the dew!
How dazzling the fiesta!
How tremendous with the finalbanderillas of darkness!
But now he sleeps without end.
Now the moss and the grassopen with sure fingersthe flower of his skull.
And now his blood comes out singing;singing along marshes and meadows,slides on frozen horns,faltering souls in the miststumbling over a thousand hoofslike a long, dark, sad tongue,to form a pool of agonyclose to the starry Guadalquivir.
Oh, white wall of Spain!
Oh, black bull of sorrow!
Oh, hard blood of Ignacio!
Oh, nightingale of his veins!
No.
I will not see it!
No chalice can contain it,no swallows can drink it,no frost of light can cool it,nor song nor deluge of white Lillie's,no glass can cover it with silver.
No.
I will not see it!3.
The Laid Out
Stone is a forehead where dreams grievewithout curving waters and frozen cypresses.
Stone is a shoulder on which to bear Timewith trees formed of tears and ribbons and planets.
I have seen grey showers move towards the wavesraising their tender riddle arms,to avoid being caught by lying stonewhich loosens their limbs without soaking their blood.
For stone gathers seed and clouds,skeleton larks and wolves of penumbra:but yields not sounds nor crystals nor fire,only bull rings and bull rings and more bull rings without walls.
Now,
Ignacio the well born lies on the stone.
All is finished.
What is happening!
Contemplate his face:death has covered him with pale sulphurand has place on him the head of dark Minotaur.
All is finished.
The rain penetrates his mouth.
The air, as if mad, leaves his sunken chest,and Love, soaked through with tears of snow,warms itself on the peak of the herd.
What are they saying?
A stenching silence settles down.
We are here with a body laid out which fades away,with a pure shape which had nightingalesand we see it being filled with depth less holes.
Who creases the shroud?
What he says is not true!
Nobody sings here, nobody weeps in the corner,nobody pricks the spurs, nor terrifies the serpent.
Here I want nothing else but the round eyesto see his body without a chance of rest.
Here I want to see those men of hard voice.
Those that break horses and dominate rivers;those men of sonorous skeleton who singwith a mouth full of sun and flint.
Here I want to see them.
Before the stone.
Before this body with broken reins.
I want to know from them the way outfor this captain stripped down by death.
I want them to show me a lament like a riverwhich will have sweet mists and deep shores,to take the body of Ignacio where it looses itselfwithout hearing the double planting of the bulls.
Loses itself in the round bull ring of the moonwhich feigns in its youth a sad quiet bull,loses itself in the night without song of fishesand in the white thicket of frozen smoke.
I don't want to cover his face with handkerchiefsthat he may get used to the death he carries.
Go,
Ignacio, feel not the hot
Sleep, fly, rest, even the sea dies!4.
Absence of the Soul
The bull does not know you, nor the fig tree,nor the horses, nor the ants in your own house.
The child and the afternoon do not know youbecause you have dead forever.
The shoulder of the stone does not know younor the black silk, where you are shuttered.
Your silent memory does not know youbecause you have died
The autumn will come with small white snails,misty grapes and clustered hills,but no one will look into your eyesbecause you have died forever.
Because you have died for ever,like all the dead of the earth,like all the dead who are forgottenin a heap of lifeless dogs.
Nobody knows you.
No.
But I sing of you.
For posterity I sing of your profile and grace.
Of the signal maturity of your understanding.
Of your appetite for death and the taste of its mouth.
Of the sadness of your once valiant gaiety.
It will be a long time, if ever, before there is bornan Andalusian so true, so rich in adventure.
I sing of his elegance with words that groan,and I remember a sad breeze through the olive trees.
Ignacio Sánchez Mejías was a Spanish bullfighter, one of the greatest in history.
When he died after a goring (cornada) in the Plaza of Manzanares, he was memorialized by many famous poets but this is probably the best. "Llanto por la muerte de Ignacio Sánchez Mejías" ("Weeping for the Death of Ignacio Sánchez Mejías").
For many people this is the best Spanish elegy since the Coplas of Jorge Manrigue.
