We present this work in honor of the 75th anniversary of the poet’s death.

 

Let poetry be like a key
Opening a thousand doors
A leaf falls; something flies by;
Let all the eye sees be created
And the soul of the listener tremble.

Invent new worlds and watch your word;
The adjective, when it doesn’t give life, kills it.

We are in the age of nerves.
The muscle hangs,
Like a memory, in museums;
But we are not the weaker for it:
True vigor
Resides in the head.

Oh Poets, why sing of roses!
Let them flower in your poems;

For us alone
Do all things live beneath the Sun.

The poet is a little God.

Translation by David Guss

We present this work in honor of the 75th anniversary of the poet’s death.

 

I.

I will start to live in each rose
And in each lily that your eyes will see
And in every bird trill I’ll sing your name
So that you‘ll never forget me.

II.

If you cry as you contemplate the stars
And your soul fills with impossibilities,
It’s because my loneliness has come to kiss you
So that you’ll never forget me.

III.

I will paint a rose colored horizon
And I will paint blue wallflowers
And I will guild the moon on your hair
So that you’ll never forget me.

IV.

If asleep you sweetly walk
Through a world of diaphanous gardens,
Think of my heart that dreams of you,
So that you’ll never forget me.

V.

And if some evening, at a far away altar,
You hold another’s hand, and you are blessed,
When the golden ring is placed on your finger,
My soul will be an invisible tear
In the eyes of the moribund Christ
So that you’ll never forget me!

Translation by Joan Veronica

We present this work in honor of Dia de la Raza.

 

Before my window four roads meet.
They called from east, west, south and north,
And into the royal night to greet
The call my vagrant dreams rushed forth.

Yearning by every path to move,
My baffled heart could follow none,
Forever with the moon in love,
With what is dead or what is gone.

Four tempting roads for phantasy,
Beneath the flowers and warbled odes…
Oh, would that my poor heart might be
Perfume diffused over all those roads!

Translation by George Dundas Craig

In honor of Chilean Independence Day, we present this work by one of the country’s most independent poets.

 

I sing like the sun,
and the sun does not sing.

I dream like God,
and God does not dream.

I, like the earth, die,
and the earth does not die, but sings!

 

The trees are drunk, from nocturnal lights,
and they drag their shadows, nervous and stiff.

Their shadows, strangling the night’s winds,
shelter and rattle me, as if I were a bird.

And my steps echo in their black boughs,
and the weakest hooks fill me with vertigo;

yet when I cast my eye on them from another, simpler pair,
they respond, swaying, that they remained intact;

The leaves, dilating the communal shadows,
return like ruined boats to their tree.

They cannot, oh, attain the solid banks
that the tips of heavenly bodies announce from above,

yet thick with silence they plow, quivering
through deep and frozen ponds of miracle.

And in the nocturnal trees embracing the earth,
I find oblivion and mercy, when in despair,

while the light runs down their boughs,
thin, diaphanous, like water between my hands.

 

Translation by Mónica de la Torre

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 105th birthday.

 

I

And no more tears; this transparent woman,
who today is sealed away,
this woman who now is walled
in a niche grave
like a madwoman chained
to a cruel bedstead in an airless room
with neither boat nor boatman, among faceless strangers,
this woman who, alone, is
The One,
who held us all in the heaven
of her body.
Blessed
be her womb.

II

And nothing nothing else; that she bore me and made me
a man with her seventh birth
her figure of fire
and of ivory
in the trials of poverty and sadness
and she knew
how to hear through the silence of my childhood the sign
the Secret
Sign
without ever
breathing
a word.
Blessed
be the fruit of her womb.

III

Let others go instead of me
I can’t go now to put
the red carnations there
the carnations of the Rojases ‚— mine and yours ‚—
today
on the painful thirteenth day of your martyrdom
those family members who are born at dawn
and who are reborn ‚— let them go to that wall for us for Rodrigo
for Tomás for young Gonzalo for Alonso; let them go
or not as they wish
or let them leave you in the dark
alone
alone with the ashes
of your beauty
which are your resurrection Celia
Pizarro
daughter and granddaughter of Pizarros
of late Pizarros Mother;
and may you come with us
into exile dwelling as always in grace
and mutual delight.
Blessed
be thy name.

 

Translation by Tom Boll

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 240th birthday.

 

Do you know, blonde, what favor I solicit
When I cover the altars with offerings?
Not rich furnishings, not superb lands,
Neither a table that flatters the appetite.

At the edge of Aragua I want a parcel
To supply me with simple pleasures,
And close to my rustic home
A brook that runs among the rocks.

To feel good around the summery warmth,
I also want my plot to have a grove,
Where the proud coconut and the willow can grow.

I’ll be happy if in this refuge I die;
And, upon exhaling my fugitive breath,
I stamp on your lips my last goodbye!

 

Translation by José Wan Díaz