Lorca and the spaces that ache

One of my favourite lines of poetry ever written is contained in this surreal poem from Frederico Garcia Lorca.   I remember reading the final stanza for the first time maybe ten years ago and it shook me.

Intermission

Those eyes of mine from 1910
saw no dead man buried,
no ashen fairs of mourners at dawn,
no heart quivering in its corner like a sea horse.

Those eyes of mine from 1910
saw only the pale wall where the girls tinkled,
the snout of the bull, the poisonous mushroom,
and the incomprehensible moon that illuminated dried lemon rinds
under the hard black bottles in the corners.

Those eyes of mine on the neck of the pony,
on the pierced breast of the sleeping Saint Rosa,
on the tiled rooftops of love, with moans and fresh hands,
on a garden where cats ate the frogs.

Attic where the ancient dust congregates statues and mosses,
boxes that keep the silence of devoured crabs
in the place where the dream squabbled with its reality.
My small eyes are there.

Don’t ask me any questions. I have seen how things
that seek their way find the void instead.
There are spaces that ache in the uninhabited air
and in my eyes only children dressed without their nakedness!