City That Does Not Sleep
In the sky there is nobody asleep. Nobody, nobody.
Nobody is asleep.
The creatures of the moon sniff and prowl about their cabins.
The living iguanas will come and bite the men who do not dream,
and the man who rushes out with his spirit broken will meet on the street corner
the unbelievable alligator quiet beneath the tender protest of the
stars.
Nobody is asleep on earth. Nobody, nobody.
Nobody is asleep.
In a graveyard far off there is a corpse
who has moaned for three years
because of a dry countryside on his knee;
and that boy they buried this morning cried so much
it was necessary to call out the dogs to keep him quiet.
Life is not a dream. Careful! Careful! Careful!
We fall down the stairs in order to eat the moist earth
or we climb to the knife edge of the snow with the voices of the dead
dahlias.
But forgetfulness does not exist, dreams do not exist;
flesh exists. Kisses tie our mouths
in a thicket of new veins,
and whoever his pain pains will feel that pain forever
and whoever is afraid of death will carry it on his shoulders.
One day
the horses will live in the saloons
and the enraged ants
will throw themselves on the yellow skies that take refuge in the
eyes of cows.
Another day
we will watch the preserved butterflies rise from the dead
and still walking through a country of gray sponges and silent boats
we will watch our ring flash and roses spring from our tongue.
Careful! Be careful! Be careful!
The men who still have marks of the claw and the thunderstorm,
and that boy who cries because he has never heard of the invention of the bridge,
or that dead man who possesses now only his head and a shoe,
we must carry them to the wall where the iguanas and the snakes are waiting,
where the bear's teeth are waiting,
where the mummified hand of the boy is waiting,
and the hair of the camel stands on end with a violent blue shudder.
Nobody is sleeping in the sky. Nobody, nobody.
Nobody is sleeping.
If someone does close his eyes,
a whip, boys, a whip!
Let there be a landscape of open eyes
and bitter wounds on fire.
No one is sleeping in this world. No one, no one.
I have said it before.
No one is sleeping.
But if someone grows too much moss on his temples during the night,
open the stage trapdoors so he can see in the moonlight
the lying goblets, and the poison, and the skull of the theaters.
Literary Analysis
This literary analysis was generated with AI and may contain interpretive differences. Provide your analysis in the comments section.
Summary
Lorca sets the poem in a restless city that seems to spread across the whole world, where even the sky and graveyard are denied sleep. The repeated insistence that "nobody" is asleep creates a desperate chant, as if the poem were trying to wake a society numb to suffering, dreamless living, and emotional blindness. The speaker moves from eerie images of animals, corpses, and children to a wider vision of human pain that cannot be escaped, only carried.
The poem's force comes from its shifting balance between prophecy and warning. On one hand, it imagines impossible transformations-horses in saloons, butterflies rising from the dead, roses springing from a tongue-suggesting a surreal world where reality can no longer be trusted. On the other hand, those visions are shadowed by violence, fear, and decay. The central tension lies in the poem's refusal of dream as escape: it insists on flesh, memory, and pain, while also exposing a civilization so haunted that even sleep has become impossible.
Theme
- Insomnia and unrest - The repeated claim that no one is sleeping turns sleeplessness into a social and spiritual condition, not just a physical one. The city becomes a place of permanent agitation, where peace is unavailable.
- Inescapable suffering - Pain in the poem is not temporary or private; it clings to bodies, memory, and identity. Lorca presents suffering as something that follows people forever once it has entered them.
- Body versus dream - The poem rejects the comfort of dreams and insists on flesh, wounds, and physical vulnerability. This creates a harsh contrast between fantasy and the stubborn reality of the body.
- Death and living decay - Graves, corpses, skulls, and mummified body parts make death feel active and invasive. Rather than staying separate from life, death appears to press into the living world.
- Surreal transformation - Strange animals, impossible landscapes, and unnatural actions suggest a universe where ordinary logic has broken down. These images give the poem its visionary, nightmare-like energy.
- Fear and vigilance - Repeated commands to be careful and to keep eyes open suggest a world that demands constant alertness. Sleep becomes dangerous because it resembles surrender or moral failure.
Literary Devices
- Repetition - The persistent repetition of "nobody" and "be careful" creates urgency and obsession. It also gives the poem the rhythm of a warning, like a voice trying to hold back catastrophe.
- Surreal imagery - Lorca fills the poem with impossible creatures and scenes, such as iguanas, alligators, and butterflies rising from the dead. These images express psychological and social unease more powerfully than plain description could.
- Personification - Moon creatures, dead objects, and natural forces are given active roles, making the world feel animated by hidden menace. This blurs the boundary between the human and nonhuman.
- Anaphora - The repeated opening of lines and sentences with the same words creates a chant-like pressure. It helps the poem sound prophetic and insistent.
- Imperative language - Commands such as "Careful!" and calls for a whip impose an authoritarian tone. The urgency suggests that awakening is a matter of survival.
- Hyperbole - The scale of the images is deliberately extreme, from the sky to the graveyard to the whole world. This enlargement makes private distress feel universal.
- Metaphor - Pain, death, and forgetfulness are treated as if they were physical burdens or objects. Such figurative language makes abstract fear seem tangible and heavy.
Symbolism
- The city that does not sleep - The title image suggests a modern world trapped in continuous motion and anxiety, unable to rest or reconcile itself.
- The sky - The sky functions as a vast witness to human unease, extending the poem's insomnia beyond the city into the cosmos.
- Iguanas and alligators - These threatening creatures symbolize primitive, predatory forces lurking beneath civilized surfaces.
- Graveyard and corpse - These images stand for unresolved grief and the persistence of death within everyday life.
- Butterflies - Butterflies often suggest fragility and transformation, and here their return from the dead hints at impossible renewal shadowed by mortality.
- Open eyes - Eyes become a symbol of alertness, truth, and resistance to the temptation of forgetful sleep.
- Stage trapdoors and theaters - The theater imagery suggests illusion, performance, and hidden danger beneath appearances.
Tone
Lorca's tone is urgent, incantatory, and increasingly severe, as if he is delivering a warning that must be repeated until it is heard. The poem feels less like a calm reflection than a sleepless summons, moving with prophetic force through scenes of strangeness and dread. For the reader, the mood is feverish and unsettling: the images are vivid and dreamlike, yet they refuse comfort, creating the sense of a world haunted by pain, vigilance, and the impossibility of rest.
Historical Context
Lorca wrote within the broader climate of early twentieth-century Spanish modernism and the avant-garde, when poets often used startling imagery and disrupted logic to express modern unease. His work is also shaped by the tensions of urban life, social violence, and the surreal imagination that became especially important in European literature during this period.
The poem's dream imagery, bodily intensity, and violent symbolism align it with Surrealist sensibilities, even as it remains unmistakably Lorca's own. His poetry often joins folk resonance, mythic feeling, and modern crisis, producing language that makes emotional and historical anxiety feel almost physical.
Similar Poems
- The Hollow Men - T. S. Eliot
- Le Bateau ivre - Arthur Rimbaud
- A Dream within a Dream - Edgar Allan Poe
- The Second Coming - W. B. Yeats
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