The Alicante poet Francesca Aguirre, better known as Paca Aguirre, has died in Madrid at 88 years. Belonging to the so-called «another generation of the 50s», Was one of the few authors who were still active. Symbolism, depth, depth but also celebration of life, closeness, nostalgia and love make up a work of late recognition, but worthy of it with full right. These are 4 of his poems that I highlight.
Francesca Aguirre
She was the daughter of the painter Lorenzo Aguirre placeholder image and was married to Felix Grande, another important poet, with whom he had a daughter also a poet, Guadalupe Grande.
It took a long time to publish and was considered very influenced by Antonio Machado regarding the process of literary creation, which should be a reflection of one's own existence more than that creative work. That Machado influence was what stood out the most when he received the National Literature Award last year.
Of his best-known and most relevant works, it should be noted Ithaca, awarded with the Leopoldo Panero of poetry. With History of an anatomy received the National Poetry Award in 2011.
4 poems
Ithaca
And who has ever been to Ithaca?
Who does not know its harsh panorama,
the ring of sea that compresses it,
the austere intimacy that it imposes on us,
the supreme silence that traces us?
Ithaca sums us up like a book,
accompanies us towards ourselves,
it reveals to us the sound of waiting.
Because waiting sounds:
keeps echoing voices that are gone.
Ithaca denounces us the heartbeat of life,
makes us accomplices of the distance,
blind watchmen of a path
what is being done without us,
that we will not be able to forget because
there is no forgetfulness for ignorance.
It's painful to wake up one day
and contemplate the sea that embraces us,
who anoints us with salt and baptizes us as new children.
We remember the days of shared wine
the words, not the echo;
the hands, not the watered-down gesture.
I see the sea that surrounds me,
the blue bum that you have lost yourself through,
I check the horizon with exhausted greed,
I leave the eyes for a moment
fulfill his beautiful office;
then I turn my back
and I direct my steps towards Ithaca.
***
Last snow
To Pedro García Domínguez
A beautiful lie accompanies you,
but he doesn't get to caress you.
You only know what they say about her
what enigmatic books explain to you
that tell a fabulous story
with words full of meaning,
full of exact clarity and weight,
and that you do not understand however.
But your faith saves you, keeps you.
A beautiful lie watches over you,
even though he can't see you, and you know it.
You know it in that inexplicable way
in which we know what hurts us the most.
It rains from the skies time and shadow,
it rains innocence and mad grief.
A fire of shadows illuminates you,
while the snow extinguishes the stars
that were once permanent embers.
A beautiful lie accompanies you;
to infinite millions of light years,
intact and compassionate, the snow spreads.
***
Exception witness
To Maribel and Ana
A sea, a sea is what I need.
A sea and nothing else, nothing else.
The rest is small, insufficient, poor.
A sea, a sea is what I need.
Not a mountain, a river, a sky.
No, nothing nothing,
only a sea.
I don't want flowers, hands either,
not a heart to comfort me.
I don't want a heart
in exchange for another heart.
I don't want them to talk to me about love
in exchange for love.
I only want a sea:
I just need a sea.
A water away,
a water that does not escape,
a merciful water
what to wash my heart
and leave it on its shore
to be pushed by its waves,
licked by her tongue of salt
that heals wounds.
A sea, a sea to be an accomplice of.
A sea to tell everything.
A sea, believe me, I need a sea,
a sea where seas cry
and no one notices.
***
Long time
To Nati and Jorge Riechmann
I remember once when I was a child
it seemed to me that the world was a desert.
The birds had abandoned us forever:
the stars made no sense,
and the sea was no longer in its place,
Like it was all a wrong dream
I know that once when I was a child
the world was a grave, a huge hole,
a sinkhole that swallowed up life,
a funnel through which the future fled.
It is true that once, there, in childhood,
I heard the silence like a scream of sand.
The souls, the rivers and my temples were silent,
my blood stopped, as if suddenly,
without understanding why, they would have turned me off.
And the world was gone, only I remained:
an astonishment as sad as sad death,
a weird, wet, sticky strangeness.
And a lacerating hatred, a murderous rage
that, patient, rose to the chest,
it reached up to the teeth, making them gnash.
It's true, it was a long time ago, when everything began,
when the world had the dimension of a man,
and I was sure that one day my father would return
and while he sang before his easel
the ships would stand still in the harbor
and the moon would come out with her cream face.
But he never came back.
Only his paintings remain,
its landscapes, its boats,
the Mediterranean light that was in his brushes
and a girl who waits on a distant pier
and a woman who knows that the dead do not die.