IN a weary world, people often quote a few lines from Federico Garcia Lorca’s Verde que te quiero verde:

Green green I want you green: Great stars of frost come with shadows of fish that open the way of the dawn

Lorca’s poem enchants because of its leaps—the color green, great stars, shadows of fish, the dawn—which can never be neatly connected in a single interpretation, yet enrich us with images that are startling, new, fresh, and