Let's Learn Spanish… With Poetry

For Spanish people, June is not just the beginning of summer and the month with the shortest night. In June 1985, Spain was admitted to the European Union; in June, the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí was born (1852–1926); also born were the Spanish painter Diego Velázquez (1599–1660) and the poet and playwright from Granada Federico García Lorca (1898–1936).

I offer you an excerpt from a wonderful poem by Lorca, which is relatively easier for beginners – to translate or to learn:

Three Little Stories of the Wind

….

III

The breeze

is undulating

like the hair

of some girls.

Like the waves

of some old wooden boards.

The breeze

springs forth like water

and spills

– like a white balm –

through the ravines,

and faints

upon striking the hardness

of the mountain.