Photo of Fragments to forget
Luis Rosales is one of the most outstanding poets of the 36 Generation and passed away today 27 years ago. It was also essayist, Member of the Royal Spanish Academy and the Hispanic Society of America for their studies on the Spanish Golden Age. He won Cervantes Prize en 1982 throughout the whole of his work. Today in his memory I choose these 4 poems.
Luis Rosales-Camacho
Born in Granada on May 31, 1910. He studied Philosophy, Letters and Law at his university and at 1930 went to Madrid. There he makes friends with names like Leopoldo Panero, Dionisio Ridruejo or José García Nieto and heads the so-called Generation of 36.
Their first poems were published in the magazines The four winds, Cross and line, Vertex y The rooster. And already in Madrid he publishes a book of love poetry, April, where the influence of Garcilaso de la Vega. The house on, published in 1949, and Diary of a resurrection in 1979 they are considered his summit works.
4 poems
Yesterday will come
is blind sad or a breath stops
low and no light; between the high branches,
deadly, almost vibrant,
the last sun remains; the earth smells,
begins to smell; the birds
they are breaking a mirror with their flight;
the shadow is the silence of the evening.
I have felt you cry: I do not know who you cry.
There's a distant smoke
a train, that perhaps returns, while you say:
I am your own pain, let me love you.
Autobiography
Like the methodical castaway who counted the waves
that are missing to die,
and counted them, and counted them again, to avoid
mistakes, until the last,
even the one who has the stature of a child
and kisses him and covers his forehead,
so I have lived with a vague prudence of
cardboard horse in the bathroom,
knowing that I have never been wrong in anything,
but in the things that I loved the most.
***
And write your silence on the water
I don't know if it's shadow on the glass, if it's just
heat that tarnishes a shine; nobody knows
if this bird is flying or crying;
no one oppresses him with his hand, never
I've felt it beat, and it's falling
like a shadow of rain, inside and sweet,
from the forest of blood, until I leave it
almost wedged and vegetal, calm.
I don't know, it's always like this, your voice reaches me
like the March air in a mirror,
like the step that moves a curtain
behind the look; I already feel
dark and almost walked; I do not know how
I'm going to arrive, looking for you, to the center
of our heart, and there tell you,
mother, I have to do as long as I live
do not be orphaned as a child,
that you do not stay alone there in your sky,
that you do not miss me as I miss you.
***
Because everything is the same and you know it
You have arrived at your house
and now you would like to know what is the use of sitting,
what's the use of sitting like a castaway
among your poor everyday things.
Yes, now I would like to know
What is the nomadic cabinet and the home that has never been lit for,
and the Bethlehem of Granda
- the Bethlehem that was a child when we still fell asleep singing -
and what can this word be for: now
this very word "now",
when the snow starts,
when the snow is born,
when the snow grows in a life that maybe is being mine,
in a life that has no lasting memory,
that has no tomorrow,
that he hardly knows if it was carnation, if it was pink,
if it was lily towards the afternoon.
Yes now
I would like to know what is the use of this silence that surrounds me,
this silence that is like a mourning of lonely men,
this silence that I have,
this silence
that when God wants it we get tired in the body,
it takes us away,
we fall asleep to die,
because everything is the same and you know it.