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

Garcia Lorca, 1935.
Excerpt from 'Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias'

Frederico García Lorca is a Spanish playwright and poet. This poem was narrating the death of Sanchez Mejias, his friend a famous bull-fighter, who met his tragic end in the bullring on August 11th, 1934.

Two years later, Garcia Lorca himself became one of the first and most famous victims of the Spanish Civil War. On August 19, 1936, he was executed under a mysterious circumstances by Nationalist partisans, most probably due to his involvements with the left leaning Republican Front. It was only after the end of Fransisco Franco's regime in 1975 that García Lorca's works could be publicly discussed in Spain;