spanishpoetry-blog

[spanishpoetry-blog]

If I could cry out of fear in a lonely house, if I could take out my eyes and eat them, I would do it for your mournful orange tree voice and for your poetry that comes out screaming.

Pablo Neruda, from “Ode to Federico García Lorca” (via theclassicsreader)

[spanishpoetry-blog]

In Honour of a Loss

The forever certainty of being out of place where others breathe. About me, I must say I'm impatient to be given a less tragic outcome than silence. Fierce joy whenever I find the picture that alludes to me. From my heartbreaking respiration I say: let there be language where there should be silence. A person is not worded. A person cannot be attended to. And you didn't want to recognise me when I told you what was inside of me, which was you. The old horror has turned: to have spoken nothing to no one. The golden day is not for me. Dusk of a body fascinated by its own desire to die. If you love me I will know, even if I don't live. And I say to myself: Sell your strange light, your implausible siege. A fire in an unseen country. Images of a close candour. Sell your light, the heroism of your future days. The light is the surpluss of too many things too far away. What strange things I live in. -Alejandra Pizarnik

[spanishpoetry-blog]

But there is no oblivion, no dream: raw flesh. Kisses tie mouths in a tangle of new veins and those who are hurt will hurt without rest and those who are frightened by death will carry it on their shoulders.

Federico Garcia Lorca, Sleepless City (Brooklyn Bridge Nocturne)

[spanishpoetry-blog]

Canarian Stone

Dark stone, enduring fiber

of robust entrails.

You stone with the austere misery

of the homeland mountains.

I found, to survive, your strengh,

in my own grief I seeked your coat,

and dusky as the color of your misery,

only my shadow walked along with me.

You shelter my home, stand guard,

hurrying my silent grief

that wraps around the night’s riddle.

Just like today my home’s walls,

you my sadness will mercifully watch

over me in the niche at the old cemetery.

Domingo Rivero, Piedra canaria

[spanishpoetry-blog]

Dark Tunnel

Tunnel, hidden trail of my pain:

I started walking you when I was still strong

and as an old man I approach your exit.

What I’ve walked among your shadows is my life,

and to reach the light will be my death.

Domingo Rivero, Túnel oscuro

[spanishpoetry-blog]

Hymn for Satan

Hymn for Satan (first version)

Only the snow knows

the grandeur of the wolf

the grandeur of Satan,

vanquisher of the naked stone

of the naked stone that threatens the man

and in vain invokes Satan,

the Lord of the verse, of that hole

on the page

where reality falls down like dead water.

Hymn for Satan (second version)

The grandeur of the wolf

is not dim light

nor air

it’s just the glow of a shadow

of a wounded animal in the garden

at night, while you cry

like on the garden of a wounded animal.

Hymn for Satan (third version)

The dogs invade the graveyard,

and the man smiles, amazed

at the mystery of the wolf,

and the dogs invade the street

and the moon gleams between their teeth

but neither you nor anybody, dead man,

espectre of the graveyard,

will know, neither tomorrow nor ever,

how to get closer to the mystery of the wolf.

Leopoldo María Panero, Himno a Satán (1994 edition)

[spanishpoetry-blog]

The Goodnight Kiss

I

Father, I’m leaving:

I’m gonna play with the death,

father, I’m leaving.

Tell my mother goodbye

and turn off the light of my bedroom:

father, I’m leaving.

Tell that boy who laughs over there

(I don’t know what about, whether it’s life),

my name, just my name.

Put my toys in good order,

teddy bear with teddy bear, put the dog

with the bird, and concerning the duck,

leave it alone, the duck:

father, I’m leaving: I’m gonna play with the death.

There used to be a flame, yes, in my eyes,

because they stayed up many nights

and nobody could close them

but me; forgive me father, forgive that there was nobody

but me: I’m leaving.

I’m leaving alone to play with the death.

II

Father I’m dead, I know, and how dark is

everything over here:

there’s no moon here, no sun nor lands,

father, I’m dead.

Us dead people are like sick people,

and the cemetery the hospital

to play doctors

white sheet and scalpel

and so many graves like beds

to dream: and those bones are so white,

father so white: like dreaming.

The others say -the deader ones,

the ones who’ve been a while

here taking revenge on God-,

that the Devil will come, the good Devil,

that the Devil will come with more flowers

than anyone can bring.

Father, I’m dead, I’m not alone

father, I’m dead, I’ve got friends

to play with.

III

Mother, those kisses that still in my grave

you give me

they are an awakening, they are new cold;

I was alive, I once knew that,

now

let me forget.

IV

Father, I’m dead, and this grave

is a much better cradle

father, there’s nobody left, I’m alone already

father, if ever again I

come back to you, father, if ever again 

I live, I won’t know what to dream about anymore.

Leopoldo María Panero, El beso de buenas noches

[spanishpoetry-blog]

Hunger Happens

hunger

its obstinate alchemy.

violent transmutation

in the rib.

to have a living man between your fingers

and throw him at death

hunger is a death

that pretends to be forgetful

that delays

pretends to look for the date in the journal

but in the end it’s your turn

and it’s a boiling tar

you can’t tear off

it doesn’t leave a scar

or withdraws the smallest member of a home

invites them

to the frozen dance

hunger happens

I’m writing this in Costa Rica

it’s september of ‘85

but it turns out

that death here is apostolic catholic

the dream we live in can’t resist

this shackle

so nobody comments

hunger is a frowned upon feature

peace

peace here is nourished with blood

Ana Istarú, El hambre ocurre

[spanishpoetry-blog]

The Injustice

What chasm do you rise from, black shadow?

What are you looking for?

                 The hills,

like green lizards, lean out to the valleys

that sink into the mist of the world’s childhood.

And, open, the flocks doze

while the light beats, always recently created,

while time bends itself, blond mastiff that sleeps at

  the gates of God.

But you come, bleak stain,

queen of the caverns, galloping on the mistral wind,  behind your crooked pupils,

projected like two crescent meteors from the dark side,

riding the red mane of twilight,

scourging the mountain peaks

with serpent hairs, whips of hail.

You arrive,

hollowness devouring centuries and worlds,

like a vast tomb,

pushed by furies who sink their foreheads,

hard erect goats with no ears nor eyes,

that ignore the tender flesh.

Yes, from the abyss you arrive,

surly sun of blackness, you always arrive,

turbid wave, endless, without streams,

contrary to love, born like love on

the first day.

You tarnish with your hand

of wet night the warm glass

where transparent infancy looks at the blue, when happiness

was hardly even tender, when it was wearing light for the first time,

and you put on the clear eyes

the first green flame

of the muddy swamps.

You amass hatred in the winter pond

of the old man’s heart,

and spur the fear

on his abandoned, sad hounds,

that bark enraged deep into the forest.

And the men go, shredded pines

of the mountain on fire, they go down the cliff,

bouncing on the cracks,

like torches of shadows, ashen, ochre,

like blasphemies falling into hell.

...Today you come to me.

I’ve felt the thorn of you putrid thistles,

the venomous steam of your tongue,

and the spin of your wings that swirls the air.

The soul was a howl

and my mortal flesh froze to the bone.

Wound, wound, you sower of hatred:

for hatred shall not jump, as sulfur flame, from my injury.

Here I am:

I am man, like a god,

I am man, sweet fog, warm centre,

passing boil of a mysterious metal that radiates tenderness.

You may harm the flesh

and still wrangle the soul like linen:

you won’t extinguish the ember of the great love that glows

inside my heart,

you cursed beast.

You may harm the flesh.

You won’t bite my heart,

mother of hatred.

Never in my heart,

queen of the world.

Dámaso Alonso, La injusticia

[spanishpoetry-blog]

War to war because of war

War to war because of war. Come here.

Turn your back. The sea. Open your mouth.

Against a mine clashes a mermaid

and an archangel sinks, indifferent.

Time of fire. Goodbye. Urgently.

Close your eyes. It’s the mount. Touch.

The mountaintops jump, splashing rocks all around,

and an archangel flees, indifferent.

Dynamite the moon too? Come on.

Death to death because of death: war.

Truly, the bull thinks, the world is beautiful.

Lightened up, my love, are the bouquets.

Open your mouth. (The sea. The mount.) Close

your eyes and untie your hair.

Rafael Alberti, Guerra a la guerra por la guerra

[spanishpoetry-blog]

The Song of the West

Headless rider,

rider like a child searching through the stubble

for recently cut keys,

for seductive vipers, luxurious disasters,

ships for the earth slowly made of flesh,

of flesh until dying the way a man dies.

Far away,

a bonfire transforms memories into ashes,

nights like an only star,

blood gone astray in the veins one day,

fury the color of love,

love the color of oblivion,

now only adequate for the sad attic.

Far away, the West sings,

the same West that in the old times hands

thought they had captured, like the air the moon,

however the moon is wood, the hands liquidize

drop by drop identical tears.

So let’s forget everything, even the very West;

let’s forget that one day the stares of the present

will shine to the night, as so many lovers,

over the far West,

over the farthest love.

Luis Cernuda, La canción del oeste

[spanishpoetry-blog]

To an Andalusian Boy

I would have given you the world,

boy arisen when the

light fell upon the Conquero aqueduct,

behind the ochre hill,

among the old pines of evergreen joy.

Are you the effluence of the near sea?

You were the sea, more so than the

waters that swelled with a breath

canalized through the river across your open land

underneath the skies, with clouds who embroidered 

  /themselves with broken shines.

You were the sea, more so

behind the poor clothes that hid your body;

you were the primal shape,

a force unaware of its own beauty.

And your lips, of such terse slant,

were life itself,

like a burning flower

nourished with the sap

of a dark skin that instills

nocturnal shiver.

If only love was a wing.

The uncertain hour of torn clouds,

the dark, blind river underneath a strange breeze,

the reddish hill, its pines loaded up on secrets,

they sent you to me, to my already

  /fallen yearning

like a tangible truth.

Harmonious expression of that same wilderness,

among the frozen ghosts that inhabit our world,

you were one truth.

The only truth I search, more so

than the truth of love, truth of life;

and, forgetting that shadows and sorrows forever stalk

the summit, virgin of light and bliss,

I wanted for a moment to stop your inevitable course.

I believed in you, boy.

When the evident sea,

with the undeniable sun of the noon,

suspended my body

in the abdication of man in the face of his god,

the remains of remembrance

would rise your image as the only memory.

And then,

with its lights the violent Atlantic,

as many sand dunes, and your native Conquero,

they were all within me, spoken in your figure,

divine figure for my yearning.

Because I’ve never wanted crucified gods,

sad gods who insult

this burning land that made you and unmade you.

Luis Cernuda, A un muchacho andaluz