Gabriel Celaya was born on a day like today in 1911 in hernani. He lived in Madrid, where he met the poets of 27 and other intellectuals who decided him to dedicate himself entirely to poetry. Among his works stand out Plural, Almost in prose o Penultimate poems. With Clear to clear, for which he won the Critics Award. And in 1986 he received the National Prize for Spanish Letters. I select some of their poems to remember it.
Gabriel Celaya - poems
Sometimes I imagine that I am in love ...
Sometimes I imagine that I'm in love
And it's sweet, and it's strange
although, seen from the outside, it is stupid, absurd.
Trendy songs seem pretty to me
and i feel so lonely
that at night I drink more than usual.
Adela has fallen in love with me, Marta has fallen in love with me,
and, alternately, Susanita and Carmen,
and alternately I am happy and cry.
I am not very intelligent, as you understand,
but I am pleased to know one of many
and in being vulgar I find some rest.
Man love
My strict will, my dry point
what is taming in her
oceanic passions and ancient rumors. The cautery that I apply
to that loving sore that, without form, throbs.
If I hurt, I kill, I spawn.
(His lifeless smile moves and excites me.)
If I caress it, I measure,
subject their mistakes and all
the sum softness that invites nothing.
Until finally, in blood,
in her only herself,
in my going through my own feelings,
I get it, I kill it, I die.
Passionately
And so much, and so much I love you
that my words die
in a rumor of relentless kisses!
And still so much that my hands
they do not find you when they touch you!
So much and so without rest,
that I flow, and I flow, and I flow,
and it's just crying!
Close and far
Beyond sin
unspeakable, I adore you,
and when looking for my words
I only find a few kisses.
On the chest, on the nape,
i love you
In the secret chalice,
i love you
where your belly is combo,
fugitive your back,
your body smelly,
i love you
Night
And the night rises like music in the making,
and the stars shine trembling to be extinguished,
and the cold, the clear cold,
the great cold of the world,
the little reality of what I see and touch,
the little love that I find,
they move me to look for you,
woman, in a certain forest of hot beats.
Only you, my sweet,
sweet in the smells of thick and strong sap,
speechless, very close, throbbing with me,
only you are real in a pretended world;
and I touch you, and I believe you,
and you are warm and soft matrix of realities,
lover, shelter, mother,
or weight of the earth that only in you caress,
or presence that still lasts when I close my eyes,
out of me, so beautiful.
Rest
With tenderness, with peace, with innocence,
with a soft sadness or tiredness
that becomes a faithful dog that we caress,
I'm sitting in my chair and I'm happy
and I am happy
because I don't feel the need to think something precise.
With a fatigue that is not a disappointment,
with a joy that does not encourage hope,
I'm in my chair, and I'm
in something that maybe just love.
I know I float
and yet nothing seems indifferent to me;
I know that nothing makes me happy or hurts
and yet everything touches me;
I know that is love
or maybe it's just a sweet tiredness;
i know i'm happy
because I don't feel the need to think something precise.
Hen&Stag
Maybe when I die
they will say: He was a poet.
And the world, always beautiful, will shine without conscience.
Maybe you don't remember
who I was, but in you they sound
the anonymous verses that one day I put in the making.
Maybe there is nothing left
not a word from me,
not one of these words that today I dream of tomorrow.
But seen or not seen
but said or not said,
I will be in your shadow, oh beautifully alive!
I will continue to follow,
I'll keep dying
I will be, I don't know how, part of the great concert.
I didn't know Celaya, I really like these poems… ..from Venezuela