Rafael de Leon, a well-known poet and lyricist, was born in Seville in 1908 and passed away on a day like today in Madrid in 1982. He wrote poems and songs like the famous Green eyes, La parrala, Tattoo o Always Seville. Among his lyrical creation is this selection of sonnets chosen. To remember it or discover it.
Rafael de Leon
From an aristocratic family, he inherited three titles. He had a very religious upbringing in his childhood and later went to Granada to study Law. There he met Federico Garcia Lorca. Upon finishing his academic training, he returned to Seville and entered the music and theater. It is at this stage when he begins to collaborate in the composition of lyrics. He also wrote scripts for film but without much success, and focused on poetry and song writing. It can be considered that he belonged to the Generation of 27, although it has been relegated to unjust oblivion.
Rafael de León — sonnets
Sonnet
Drinking the sweet spring
the afternoon by the river surprised me
and I could contemplate at my will
the idyll of water and the palm tree.
I dove naked in the fish tank
looking for a heart like mine,
and I didn't find a lighthouse or a ship
to give me flag signals.
The night was jumping along the shore
and put on my disheveled head
the green-blue edge of its blade.
But when my fortune was drowning,
the wind wanted to send my move
the white lifesaver of the moon.
Dead of love
My arm doesn't know it, nor my leg,
nor the thread of my voice, nor my waist,
The moon that is inside doesn't even know
in my garden of love and warmth.
And I'm dead, yes, like a tender
rose, or a gazelle on the plain,
like round water in the cistern
or a dog with yellow teeth.
And today is Corpus Christi, Lord, I have walked
my corpse, of illuminated love,
like a sinister scarecrow.
People, without surprise, have looked at me
and no one has taken off his hat
to pray a sad Our Father to me.
Sentinel of love
I put you behind the wall in front of me
to keep you better kept,
and I watched over you, oh, love daily
with bayonet and soldier helmet.
I loved you so much, so much, that people
He pointed at me like a plague-ridden person;
but how happy I was on the bridge
of your love, oh my overflowing river.
One day, you told me: – I don't love you…-;
and my wall of glass and steel
At your voice he fell to the ground in a piece of rubble.
The saliva in my mouth turned into snow,
and I died like a short hyacinth
leaning on the rose on your shoulder.
Doubt
Why do you have dark circles this afternoon?
Where were you, love, in the early morning,
when I looked for your cowardly paleness
in the snow without sun on the pillow?
You have a cold lip line,
cold from some poorly paid kiss;
kiss that I don't know who would give you,
but I'm sure they have given you.
What black velvet makes you love
the profile of your eyes of good wheat?
What blue vein or map condemns you
to the honey whip of my punishment?
And why did you cause me this pain?
If you know, oh love! that I am your friend?
I need you, your presence
I need you, your presence,
of your happy madness in love.
I can't stand it overwhelming my home
the lipless gloom of your absence.
I need you, your mercy,
of the fury of light of your gaze;
that red and tremendous flare
that you impose on me, love, of penance.
I need your reins of sanity
and although sometimes your pride tortures me
I do not resign from my position as lover.
I need the honey of your tenderness,
the metal of your voice, your fever.
I need you, I need you.
END OF THE YEAR
I ran into you in the spring,
a sunny afternoon, thin and fine,
and you were a creeper on my back,
and at my waist, ribbon and serpentine.
You gave me the softness of your wax,
and I gave you the salt of my salt mine.
And we sail together, without a flag,
through the sea of ​​rose and thorn.
And then, to die, to be two rivers
without oleanders, dark and empty,
for the clumsy mouths of people….
And behind, two moons, two swords,
two waists, two linked mouths
and two love arches of the same bridge.
(From Four Four Love Sonnets)
I
Saying "I love you" with a veiled voice
and kiss other lips sweetly,
It is not having being, it is finding the source
that gives us the mouth in love.
A kiss like that doesn't mean anything,
It is ashes of love, not boiling lava,
that in love you must always be present,
morning, afternoon, night and dawn.
What a sweetheart is more colt than lamb,
more thorn than flower, sun, not star,
dog in the heart, living candle…
Ours is not like that, why fool ourselves?
Our thing is to navigate without meeting each other,
adrift, love, adrift.