Federico Garcia Lorca

From Wikipedia:

Federico García Lorca (June 5, 1898 – August 19, 1936) was a Spanish poet and dramatist, also remembered as a painter, pianist, and composer. An emblematic member of the Generation of '27, he was killed by Nationalist partisans at the age of 38 at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War.

The Franco regime placed a general ban on his work, which was not rescinded until 1953 when a (heavily censored) Obras completas was released. It was only after Franco's death in 1975 that García Lorca's life and death could be openly discussed in Spain.

In 1968, Joan Baez sang translated renditions of Lorca's poems, "Gacela Of The Dark Death" and "Casida of the Lament" on her spoken-word poetry album, Baptism. In 1986, Leonard Cohen's English translation of the poem "Pequeño vals vienés" by García Lorca reached #1 in the Spanish single charts (as "Take This Waltz", music by Cohen). Cohen has described Lorca as being his idol in his youth, and named his daughter Lorca Cohen for that reason.

Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias

1. Cogida and death

At five in the afternoon. It was exactly five in the afternoon.
A boy brought the white sheet at five in the afternoon.
A frail of lime ready prepared at five in the afternoon.
The rest was death, and death alone.

The wind carried away the cottonwool at five in the afternoon.
And the oxide scattered crystal and nickel at five in the afternoon.
Now the dove and the leopard wrestle at five in the afternoon.
And a thigh with a desolated horn at five in the afternoon.

The bass-string struck up at five in the afternoon.
Arsenic bells and smoke at five in the afternoon.
Groups of silence in the corners at five in the afternoon.

And the bull alone with a high heart!
At five in the afternoon.
When the sweat of snow was coming at five in the afternoon,
when the bull ring was covered with iodine at five in the afternoon.

Death laid eggs in the wound at five in the afternoon.
At five in the afternoon. At five o'clock in the afternoon.
A coffin on wheels is his bed at five in the afternoon.
Bones and flutes resound in his ears at five in the afternoon.

Now the bull was bellowing through his forehead at five in the afternoon.
The room was iridiscent with agony at five in the afternoon.
In the distance the gangrene now comes at five in the afternoon.
Horn of the lily through green groins at five in the afternoon.
The wounds were burning like suns at 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!