Lorca’s Dragonfly

I was teaching photography at UCLA in the early 1990s. I like to arrive to the university before classes started for the day so that I could walk around the almost empty campus grounds that smelled so sweet and fresh. There was a stand of Jacaranda trees with purple clustered blossoms that glowed with the early morning light.  As if turning my back to God, the moment came when I would have to regretfully blink away from that hallucinatory vision and trod down the stairs of the art building into the windowless dungeon where all photography classes are inevitably held.

One morning, as the students trickled in, a young woman strode in ceremoniously, holding something in her cupped hands.  She stood before me, said, “I found this for you”, uncupped her hands to reveal a dragonfly.   It seemed like it was breathing, that couldn’t be, I thought to myself.  Nevertheless it heaved, pulsed even. It was dying.

I grew up on the banks of the Mystic River.  Among the cat tail marshes and sluggish waters, dragonflies thrived. We called them ‘sewing needles’ and believed that if one landed on your lips while your mouth was closed it would be sewn shut for all time. Our mouths stretched widely while we played by the River Mystic.

I conducted the class for the next two hours while the dragonfly slowly expired in my hand.  I went home that afternoon and made this photograph. For the memorial service, I read aloud my favorite poem by Frederico Garcia Lorca before climbing to the roof and sending the dragonfly to the wind.

The Little Mute Boy

The little boy was looking for his voice.

(The king of the crickets had it.)

In a drop of water

The little boy was looking for his voice.

 

I do not want it for speaking with;

I will make a ring of it

So that he may wear my silence

On his little finger

 

In a drop of water

The little boy was looking for his voice.

 

(The captive voice, far away, put on a cricket’s clothes.)

 

Image and text by Mark Alice Durant. Poem by Frederico Garcia Lorca.