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Last week my friend Sam and I traveled to Granada, the city of one of my heroes, the poet Federico García Lorca.
This is his city, in his words, but with my eyes.
The houses reveal faces with empty eyes among the verdure, and the grasses, poppies and vines dance entertainingly to the sound of the breeze from the sun.
The shadows are lifting and vanishing languidly, while in the air there is a piping of ocarinas and reed-flutes produced by the birds.
In the distance there are confusions of mist and heliotrope among the poplar groves, and now and then, in the dawn freshness, is heard a distant bleating in the key of F.
With fantastic echoes, white houses spring up on the mountain. Opposite, the golden towers of the Alhambra reveal a jagged oriental dream against the sky.
The Darro [river] cries its ancient lament, lapping the regions of Moorish legend. The sound of the city vibrates in the air.
The Albaizín [neighborhood] is heaped on its hill raising aloft its towers full of Mudéjar grace...it displays an infinite external harmony.
All the softness and paleness of indecisive blues changes to splendid luminosity,
and the ancient towers of the Alhambra are illuminated with roseate light...
the houses with their whiteness, and the shadows, exchanging brilliant greens.
The sun of Andalucía begins to sing its song of fire to which all things listen with fear.
The light is so marvellous and unique that the birds crossing the air are rare metals, solid rainbows, and red opals.
There are other corners of these antiquities, in which a purely Granadine romantic spirit seems to revive...the deeply lyrical Albaizín.
Streets that hear the silvery melodies of the Darro, and the ballads of the leaves, that sing the distant groves of the Alhambra...
An Albaizín splendidly romantic and distinguished.
An Albaizín to the rhythm of St Isabel, and the entrances to the Carmels.
The Albaizín of fountains, bowers, cypresses,
of decorative gratings, of the full moon, of ancient musical romance,
the Albaizín of the cornucopia, of the convent organ, of Arab patios,
of the upright piano, of spacious rooms moist with the scent of lavender,
of cashmere shawls, of carnations.
To traverse these streets is to observe fearful contrasts of mysticism and desire.