León Felipe

The Three Rotten Apples

The red apple they gave me to eat yesterday
had a worm; the white apple my parents ate had two
worms; and the green apple the original couple
ate, already in the false door of Paradise, had so
many worms that we all could inherit our share.

If there's an apple without worms in the
world, it's not behind me, it's ahead of me.

Now then. A man can take back his word.
Every honest man can take back his word and say:
I don't want the red apple. Yesterday I sang its
virtues for a buck because I thought it was man's
apple. Today I've seen that it has a worm. I
don't want it. I'm going to look for another
apple.

But what an honest man can't say is this:
The red apple has a worm, I don't want it. I'll
take my father's white apple again, for though it
has two worms, it also has a history, and all my
clan lived off its rotten pulp.

This is cowardice, slyness, wanting to keep on
smoking without geting up from the rocking-chair.

From the rocking-chairs certain savants still
keep talking about freedom ...

And they say that freedom is the will to rock
from left to right, to go in silent rhythmic back-
and-forths, from one rotten apple to another
rotten apple, because outside of this rocking
there's nothing more than the thick black wall.

And if one man or one people suddenly jumps up
and goes to spatter his brains against the thick
black wall, they shout to him that he's nuts or
violent.

But he's neither nuts nor violent. He's a
character who says:

If there isn't an apple without worms in the
whole world, ... what do I want my brains for?

I believe that the final test, the Great Test,
is met in the broken skull of man.

Because it's also written: And he who lose
his skull shall find it.

But There Aren't Any Madmen Any More

There aren't any madmen any more, friends, there
aren't any madmen any more. That fellow from
Manchego, that disheveled phantom from the desert, died
and ... there aren't any madmen in Spain.
The whole world's sane,
terribly, monstrously sane.
Hear ... this,
historians ... philosophers ... keepers in looney bins ...
Franco ... the Iscariot toad and thief in the
judge's seat dishing out sentences and gravy,
in the name of Christ, with the effigy
of Christ fastened on his chest,
and the man here, on foot, firm, head high, calm,
with his pulse normal, with his tongue in silence,
his eyes in their sockets and his bones in their places ...
The Iscariot toad and thief dishing out
sentences and gravy ...
and I, hushed here, hushed, impassive, sane ...
sane! otherwise the wheels in my head
would shatter!
When will he lose his mind? (I ask,
looney-bin keepers.)
When does a man go mad? When, when is it,
when the absurd
and blashemous concepts are declared,
and some gestures are made without feeling,
monstrous and obscene?
When is it, when they say, for example:
It's not true, God hasn't set
man here, on earth, under the light
and the law of the universe;
man is a bug
that lives in the red smelly parts
of the monkey and camel?
When if not now (I ask, looney-bin keepers),
when is it that the eyes stop and stay open,
hugely open,
and the flame and the wind cannot close them?
When is it that the soul's functions
and the body's springs change,
and instead of weeping there's no more than
laughter and drivel in our expressions?
If it isn't now, now that justice is worth less,
infinitely less, than dog-piss;
if it isn't now, now that justice has less,
infinitely less rank than manure;
if it isn't now ... when will he lose his mind?
Answer me, looney-bin keepers,
when will the mechanism of his skull shatter
and jump broken in a thousand pieces?
There aren't any madmen any more, friends, there
aren't any madmen any more. That fellow from
Manchego, that disheveled phantom from the
desert, died
and ... there aren't any madmen in Spain.
The whole world's sane,
terribly, monstrously sane! ...
How well the clock runs! How well the skull runs!
This clock ... this skull, tick-tock, tick-tock,
tick-tock, it's a perfect clock ...
perfect, perfect!

I Haven't Come To Sing

I haven't come to sing, you can put away
your guitars.
And I haven't come, I'm not here fixing my papers
so they'll make me a saint when I die.
I've come to look at my face in the tears
that flow toward the sea,
down the river
and through the cloud ...
and in the tears that hide
in the well,
in the night,
in the blood ...

I've come to see my face in all
the tears of the world.
And also to put a drop of quicksilver, of weeping,
at least a drop of my weeping
on the great moon of this limitless mirror,
where those who may come may see me
and recognize themselves.
I've come to hear again this old judgement
in the darkness:
You will win your bread in the sweat of your brow
and the light with the sorrow of your eyes.
Your eyes are the fountains of weeping and light.

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