Alfonso Reyes was a poet and writer who died on this day in 1959 in Mexico City due to a heart condition. He was nominated five times for the Nobel Prize in Literature and won the National Literature in Mexico in 1945, but he was closely linked to Spain. We remember or discover his figure with these poems chosen from his work.
Alfonso Reyes
Study Right and in 1909 he founded the Youth Athenaeum along with other writers such as Pedro Henríquez Ureña, Antonio Caso and José Vasconcelos Calderón. He published his first book, aesthetic issues, when I was 21 years old. The Mexican Revolution was a turning point that led him to come to Spain, where he stayed until 1924. He collaborated in the Journal of Spanish Philology, Western Magazine and Hispanic Revue. Here he dedicated himself to literature and combined it with journalism. He also worked at the Center for Historical Studies of Madrid under the direction of Ramón Menéndez Pidal.
His works include poems, criticism, essays and memoirs and novels.
Alfonso Reyes — Poems
Havana
It is not Cuba, where the sea dissolves the soul.
It is not Cuba - which Gaugin never saw,
that Picasso never saw,
Where black people dressed in yellow and cherry
They circle the boardwalk, between two lights,
and the defeated eyes
They no longer hide their thoughts.
It is not Cuba – the one that heard Stravisnsky
Arrange sounds of marimbas and güiros
At the funeral of Papa Montero,
Ñañigo with a cane and rumbero scoundrel.
It is not Cuba - where the colonial Yankee
He cures himself of hot flashes by sipping “slushies”
Of breeze, on the terraces of the neighborhood;
Where the police disinfect
The sting of the latest mosquitoes
They still hum in Spanish.
It is not Cuba – where the sea is transparent
So that the spoils of the Maine are not lost,
And a revolutionary contractor
It dyes the afternoon air white,
Fanning, with a veteran smile,
From your rocking chair, the fragrance
Of customs coconuts and mangoes.
The threat of the flower
Poppy flower:
deceive me and don't love me.
How much you exaggerate the aroma,
how much you extreme your flush,
flower that you paint dark circles
and exhale your soul to the sun!
Poppy flower.
One looked like you
in the blush with which you deceive,
and also because he had,
like you, black eyelashes.
Poppy flower.
One looked like you...
And I tremble just to see
your hand placed in mine:
Tremble may not dawn one day
when you become a woman!
Just
Sometimes, made of nothing,
an effluvium rises from the ground.
Suddenly, in silence,
The cedar sighs with aroma.
How are we the thin one?
dissolution of a secret,
as soon as the soul gives way
overflows the fountain of a dream.
What a miserable thing the lazy
reason when, in the silence,
one like sunshine
It brings me down, from your memory!
As the afternoon declines, friends approach
As the afternoon declines, friends approach;
but the little voice doesn't stop crying.
We close the windows, the doors, the shutters,
but the drop of regret continues to fall.
We don't know where the little voice comes from;
We searched the farm, the stable, the haystack.
The field sleeps in the warmth of the soft sun,
but the little voice doesn't stop crying.
-The squeaky ferris wheel! -say the sharpest ones-.
But there are no ferris wheels here! What a unique thing!
They look at each other astonished, they become silent
because the little voice doesn't stop crying.
What was once laughter is now frank dismay.
and a vague discomfort takes over everyone,
and everyone says goodbye and runs away in a hurry,
because the little voice doesn't stop crying.
When the night comes, the sky is already a sob
and even the firewood in the hearth pretends to sob.
Alone, without talking to each other, we cry aloud,
but the little voice doesn't stop crying.
Today we heard from the poet
Today we heard from the poet:
Between the cooing of the mouth organs
And hanging the arms of the last stars,
He stopped his horse.
The women's camp clapped its hands,
Dressing the corn tortillas.
The girls bit the stems of the flowers,
And the old people sealed tearful friendships
Among the libations of the deep dawn.
They carried basins of water,
And the boss was getting ready
To wash their breasts, their heads and their beards.
The Potters of the Seven Wives
They were already caressing the wet jugs.
The children of the country that does nothing
They lit long cigars like batons.
And in the morning sacrifice,
Lambs for all
They spun strung on the pikes
On the lighting of fragrant logs.
Today we heard from the poet,
Because he was asleep on horseback.
He said they carry God on their horns
And the night has acid roses
On the carpets of the two twilights.
The neighborhood of the sea is abolished
The neighborhood of the sea is abolished:
It is enough to know that they have our backs,
That there is a huge and green window
Where to swim.