Rose Chacel He was a poet, essayist, and novelist. Born in Valladolid in 1898, he died a day like today in 1994 in Madrid, where he lived. Linked to 27 GenerationHe collaborated with several magazines and joined important literary gatherings of the time such as the Athenaeum. Of his extensive work, composed of novels, essays, short stories and poetry, his novel stands out Maravillas neighborhood. He won National Literature Award Spanish in 1987, among others. This is one selection of poems. To remember or discover it.
Rosa Chacel - Chosen Poems
The sailors
They are the ones who live unborn on earth:
do not follow them with your eyes,
your hard gaze, nourished with firmness,
falls at his feet like helpless weeping.
They are the ones who live in the liquid oblivion,
hearing only the maternal heart that rocks them,
the pulse of calm or storm
like the mystery or song of an endearing environment.
Night butterfly
Who could hold you dark goddess
who would dare caress your body
or breathe the night air
through the brown hair on your face? ...
Ah, who would bind you when you pass
on the forehead like a breath and buzz
the room shaken by your flight
and who could without dying! feel you
tremble on the lips stopped
or laugh in the shadows, uncovered,
when your cloak hits the walls? ...
Why come to the mansion of man
if you do not belong to their meat or have
voice nor can you understand the walls?
Why bring the long blind night
that does not fit in the chalice of limits ...
From the unspoken breath of the shadow
that the forest tends on the slopes
-broken rock, unpredictable moss-,
from logs or vines,
from the lewd voice of silence
the eyes come from your slow wings.
Gives the datura its night song
that transcends the compass that the ivy goes
ascending towards the height of the trees
when the rattlesnake drags his rings
and soft voices beat in throats
among the silt that nourishes the white lily
watched at night intensely ...
On hairy mountains, on beaches
where the white waves defoliate
stretched loneliness is at your flight ...
Why do you bring to the bedroom,
to the open window, confident, terror? ...
Queen Artemis
Sitting, like the world, on your own weight,
the peace of the hillsides on your stretched skirt,
the silence and the shadow of the sea caves
next to your sleeping feet.
To what deep bedroom do your eyelashes give way
when lifting heavy as curtains, slow
such as bridal shawls or funeral drapes ...
to what perennial stay hidden from time?
Where does the path that your lips discover,
to what carnal chasm your throat descends,
What everlasting bed begins in your mouth?
The wine of ashes his bitter alcohol exhales
while the glass airs, with its pause, the breath.
Two vapors raise their secret fragrances,
they are contemplated and measured before being confused.
Because love longs for its grave in the flesh;
wants to sleep his death in the heat, without forgetting,
to the tenacious lullaby that the blood murmurs
while eternity beats in life, insomniac.
You, owner and resident of the cracks ...
You, owner and inhabitant of the cracks,
emula of the Argentine viper.
You, who elude the empire of the sloe
and you flee from the sunrise in the leap hour.
You, what, like the golden weaver
that grinds in a dark, grim corner,
the vine you do not nourish, that the crucible declines
and yes, his blood you squeeze, sippy.
You go, without staining yourself, among the impure mob
towards the place where with noble trace,
the pigeon suckles its young.
Me, meanwhile, while the bloody, dark
climbing my walls threatens,
I step on the ghost that burns in my sleepless nights.
I found the olive tree and the acanthus ...
I found the olive tree and the acanthus
that without knowing you planted, I found asleep
the stones of your forehead dislodged,
and that of your faithful owl, solemn song.
The immortal flock, feeding to song
of your dawns and lapsed naps,
the frenzied chariots, departed
of your bitter hours with grief.
The angry and violent red muse,
the serene epic and pure deity
that where you dreamed today sits.
From these pieces I compose your sculpture.
Our friendship my own years counts:
my sky and my plain spoke of you.
A dark, trembling music ...
A dark, trembling music
crusade of lightning and trills,
of evil breaths, divine,
of the black lily and of the ebúrnea rose.
A frozen page, that does not dare
copy the face of irreconcilable fates.
A knot of evening silences
and a doubt in its thorny orbit.
I know it was called love. I have not forgotten,
nor, that seraphic legions,
they turn the pages of history.
Weave your cloth on the golden laurel,
while you hear the hearts hum,
and drink the nectar faithful to your memory.
Source: To half voice