The Unfaithful Housewife
By Federico García Lorca
(Translated by Conor O’Callaghan)

And I took her to the river
believing she was a maiden,
but she had a husband.

It was the night of Saint James
and almost as if by arrangement.
The street lamps went out
and the crickets lit up.
In the farthest corners
I touched her sleeping breasts
and they opened to me suddenly
like branches of hyacinth.
The starch of her petticoat
sounded in my ears
like a piece of silk
rent ten times over.

Without light on the anemones
nor silver on the fish,
I took off my tie.
She took off her dress.
I, the belt with revolver.
She, her four bodices.
Neither nard nor shell
has the skin so fine,
nor the crystals at the moonlight
glass with such brilliance.

Her thighs slipped away from me
like startled fish,
one half full of fire,
the other half of ice.
That night I ran
the best of all my roads,
mounted on a nacre mare
without bridles or stirrups.

As a man, I won’t repeat
what she said to me.
Light from understanding
has made me most discreet.
I left her by the river
with wind in the poplars,
the boy buttoning his belt,
and she, nothing on.