The Gipsy Nun (Romancero Gitano) by Mikis Theothorakis/Classical Guitar Duo

The Gipsy Nun

Silence of white lime and myrtle.
Mallows blooming among meadow grasses.
The gypsy nun embroidering gillyflowers on a lemon cloth.
In the ashen chandelier fly the seven prismatic birds.
A bear on its back; the church growling in the distance.
How ingeniously she sews! And with such grace!
She is hungry to embroider on the lemon cloth flowers
of her pleasure.
What a sunflower! What magnolias of filigrees and spangles!
Such saffron, such moonflower across the hallowed cloth!
In the nearby kitchen, five grapefruit ripening:
the five wounds of Christ, cut in Almería.
Through the nun's eyes two gypsy outlaws gallop.
A dull and forbidding sigh loosens and lifts the chemise
from her body and seeing clouds and mountains
across the inert distance, her heart of lemon yerbaluisa
and sugar comes undone. Ai, what a rising plateau
with twenty suns shining above! And what rivers, rising on their feet,
has her fantasy has glimpsed! But she endures with her flowers,
while, all around in the wind, the light plays the high game of chess
across the latticework of the windows.

Music: Mikis Theodorakis
Poetry: Federico Garcia Lorca
Transcription for Guitar Duo: Yiannis Iliopoulos
Guitars: Tasos Chatzioannou & Dimitris Mountouris
Recorded at Subway Recording Studios by Vangelis Sapounas
Athens 2025