Emilio Ballagas was born on a day like today in 1908 in Camaguey and was a poet and essayist of reference work in Hispanic American literature. Located in the neoromanticism, his poetry stands out for the deep love for his Cuban land and an intense search for national identity. We remember him, or discover him, with this selection of poems.
Emilio Ballagas
Emilio Ballagas Cubeñas studied at the University of Havana and obtained a PhD in Pedagogy, but ended up occupying the chair de Literature and Grammar at the Normal School for Teachers of Santa Clara, where he remained until 1946. At the same time he combined teaching with poetic creation.
Su work is characterized by its intensity emotional, musicality and the deep roots in Cuban culture. He touched on topics such as love, death, nature, national identity and the human condition. He was also very attracted to the african roots from his town.
Some of his most important works are Jubilation and escape, Eternal flavor o Map of poetry black american, a fundamental essay to understand the influence of African culture on Hispanic American poetry.
Emilio Ballagas — Selected poems
Elegy by Maria Belen Chacon
Mary Bethlehem, Mary Bethlehem, Mary Bethlehem.
Maria Belen Chacon, Maria Belen Chacon, Maria Belen Chacon,
with your buttocks swinging back and forth,
from Camagüey to Santiago, from Santiago to Camagüey.
In the sky of rumba,
will never again shine,
your constellation of curves.
What bark bit the apex of your lung?
Maria Belen Chacon, Maria Belen Chacon…
What bark bit the apex of your lung?
It was neither bark nor claw,
It was neither a nail nor was it damage.
It was the ironing, in the middle of the night, that burned your lung!
Maria Belen Chacon, Maria Belen Chacon…
And then in the morning,
With the clothes, in the basket, they took your sandunga,
your sandunga and your lung.
Let no one dance now!
Don't let black Andrés pull any more fleas off his three!
And the Chinese, who start a fight inside the maracas,
make some peace.
Kiss the cross of the keys.
(Deliver us from all evil, Virgin of Charity!)
I will no longer see my instincts
in the round and cheerful mirrors of your two buttocks.
Your constellation of curves
the sky of the sandunga will never again light up.
Maria Belen Chacon, Maria Belen Chacon.
Maria Belen, Maria Belen:
with your buttocks swinging back and forth,
from Camagüey to Santiago…
From Santiago to Camagüey.
Impatient poem
What if you were late,
When my mouth has
dry ash taste,
to bitter lands?
What if you arrived when
the dark and disturbed earth (blind, dead)
rain on my eyes,
and banished from the light of the world
I searched for you in my light,
in the inner light that I believed
have flowing in me?
(When I might discover
that I never had light
and grope within myself,
like a blind man who stumbles at every step
with memories that hurt like thistles.)
What if you arrived when boredom was already
binds and bandages hands;
When I can't open my arms
and then close them like valves
of a loving shell that defends
its mystery, its flesh, its secret;
when you can't hear it open
Don't even touch the rose of your kiss
(my touch withered among the frozen earth)
nor feel that another perfume is born to me
that answers yours,
nor teach your roses
the color of my roses?
What if you were late?
and you will find (only)
the frozen ashes of waiting?
I think, therefore I am
I think, therefore I am
in butterflies, in silence, in girls,
in distracted water that looks out at the afternoon.
I think, then I do
poppies and birds and roots of sky.
Just by opening my eyes I make the air fly
and I give the sky clouds with the will of islands.
I think, then I invent landscapes and gestures
of girls who march half shadow and doves
and the other half are pigeons
step by step of moss to meet the dawn.
I think, then I give to this autumn season
temples, trees, bridges that emerge when you name them.
I think, therefore I am a friend of roses,
brother of the dreams with which I hear
that your eyelashes grow.
How the sea slides moved by its algae
under your eyelids
that rest so sadly on the barren nights of my fingers!
It's that I'm marching slowly to die on your lips.
Oh! my definitive love of a quarter of an hour;
I'm going to lose myself in your forehead, in your hands
in the naked body of history and greetings.
It's that I reach your chest, your belly, your thighs
with cold violins and orange voices,
with colored pianos and fish omens.
I feel the night and I wave my hands
to get away from the swarm of stars.
It's that I don't think about anything, therefore I exist in your arms,
It's that I think and I don't exist and I neither think nor exist.
It's just that I only find myself if I strip the petals off a rose
and I spin the purest apple singing.