Casida of the Branches
Casida of the Branches - form Summary
Casida's Ritual Repetition
Lorca frames the poem as a casida, using repeated refrains and ritualized imagery to create a circular, elegiac atmosphere. The poem likens branches to people who wait passively for a fall, mixing natural images (apple tree, nightingale) with ominous figures (hounds, children with veils). The form’s recurrence reinforces themes of inevitability, communal fate, and suspended motion, turning simple pastoral detail into a mournful, ritualized meditation on decline.
Read Complete AnalysesThrought the trees of Tamarit have come the hounds of lead waiting for the branches to fall, waiting till they shatter themselves. Tamarit has an apple tree with an apple on it that sobs. A nightingale gathers the sighs and a pheasant leads them off through the dust. But the branches are happiness, the branches are like us. They don't think of rain, they sleep, as if they were trees, just like that. Sitting, their knees in water, two valleys awaited the Fall. The twilight with elephantine step leant against trunks and branches. Through the trees of Tamarit are many children with veiled faces waiting for my branches to fall, waiting till they shatter themselves.
Feel free to be first to leave comment.