Luis Cernuda died on November 5, 1963 in the City of Mexico. I was born in Sevilla and went one of the most important poets of the 27 Generation. Today I remember him reviewing his figure and his work and highlighting 4 of his poems.
Luis Cernuda
He was reading to his countryman Gustavo Adolfo Becquer when he became interested in poetry as a child. Already in his youth he made his first publications in Western Magazine and also collaborated in The Truth, Noon o Coast, the Malaga magazine of Manuel Altolaguirre. He was heavily influenced by French literature, remember that one of his grandparents was French. In the Civil War he went into exile to the United States, where he worked as a teacher, and later he went to Mexico, where he died.
Their first poems were published in 1927 under the title of Air profile. In its stage of youth we A river, a love y The forbidden pleasures, which reveal their adherence to surrealism. In her maturity highlights Clouds, about the Civil War. His last stage, already in Mexico, includes Variations on Mexican theme, Live without living y With the hours counted.
4 poems
Shores of love
Like a sail on the sea
sums up that bluish eagerness that rises
until the future stars,
made wave scale
where divine feet descend into the abyss,
also your form itself,
angel, demon, dream of a dreamed love,
sums up in me an eagerness that once raised
up to the clouds its melancholic waves.
Still feeling the pulses of that eagerness,
I, the most in love,
on the shores of love,
without a light seeing me
definitely dead or alive,
I contemplate its waves and I would like to flood,
wishing madly
descend, like angels those down the foam ladder,
to the bottom of the same love that no man has ever seen.
***
Reason for tears
The night for being sad lacks borders.
His shadow in rebellion like foam,
break down the weak walls
ashamed of whiteness;
night that cannot be anything other than night.
Do lovers slash stars
perhaps the adventure extinguishes a sadness.
But you, night, driven by desires
even the paleness of the water,
you always stand waiting who knows which nightingales.
Beyond the abysses tremble
populated with serpents between feathers,
sick bed
not looking at anything other than the night
as they close the air between their lips.
The night, the dazzling night,
that next to the corners twists his hips,
waiting, who knows,
like me, like everyone.
***
I would like to be alone in the south
Maybe my slow eyes will no longer see the south
of light landscapes asleep in the air,
with bodies in the shade of branches like flowers
or fleeing in a gallop of furious horses.
The south is a desert that cries while singing,
and that voice is not extinguished like a dead bird;
towards the sea he directs his bitter desires
opening a faint echo that lives slowly.
In the south so distant I want to be confused.
The rain there is nothing more than a half-open rose;
its very mist laughs, white laughter in the wind.
Its darkness, its light are equal beauties.
***
Where oblivion dwells
Where oblivion dwells,
In the vast gardens without aurora;
Where I am only
Memory of a stone buried among nettles
On which the wind escapes his insomnia.
Where my name leaves
To the body that designates in the arms of the centuries,
Where desire does not exist.
In that great region where love, terrible angel,
Don't hide like steel
His wing on my chest,
Smiling full of aerial grace as the torment grows.
Wherever this eagerness that requires an owner in his image ends,
Submitting his life to another life,
No other horizon than facing eyes.
Where sorrows and joys are no more than names,
Native heaven and earth around a memory;
Where at last I am free without knowing it myself,
Dissolved in mist, absence,
Slight absence like baby meat.
There, there far away;
Where oblivion dwells.