Luis Rosales The Poet of the Generation of 36. Poems chosen

Luis Rosales is one of the most outstanding poets of the Generation of 36 and died today 27 years ago. He was also an essayist, a member of the Royal Spanish Academy and the Hispanic Society of America for his studies on the Spanish Golden Age. He won the Cervantes Prize in 1982 for the whole of his work. Today in his memory I choose these 4 poems.

Luis Rosales Camacho
He was born in Granada on May 31, 1910. He studied Philosophy, Letters and Law at his university and in 1930 he went to Madrid. There he becomes friends with names like Leopoldo Panero, Dionisio Ridruejo or José García Nieto and heads the so-called Generation of 36.

His first poems were published in the magazines Los cuatro vientos, Cruz y raya, Vértice and El gallo. And in Madrid he publishes a book of love poetry, April, where the influence of Garcilaso de la Vega is seen. The house on fire, published in 1949, and Diary of a resurrection in 1979 are considered his peak works.

4 poems
Yesterday will come
The afternoon will die; on the roads
blinds sad or stops an air
low and without light; between the tall branches,
deadly, almost vibrant,
the last sun remains; the earth smells,
start to smell; the birds
they break a mirror with their flight;
The shadow is the silence of the afternoon.
I've felt you cry: I don't know who you cry to.
There is a distant smoke,
a train, which perhaps returns, while you say:
I am your own pain, let me love you.


***



Autobiography
Like the methodical castaway that counted the waves
missing to die,
and count them, and retell them, to avoid
mistakes, until the last one,
even the one who has the height of a child
and kisses him and covers his forehead,
so I have lived with a vague prudence of
cardboard horse in the bathroom,
Knowing that I've never been wrong about anything
but in the things that I loved most.



***




And write your silence on the water
I don't know if it's shadow on the glass, if it's just
heat that blurs a glow; nobody knows
if this bird is flying or crying;
nobody oppresses him with his hand, never
I've felt it beat, and it's falling
like rain shadow, inside and sweet,
from the forest of blood, until leaving
Almost minted and vegetable, quiet.
I don't know, it's always like that, your voice comes to me
like the air of March in a mirror,
like the step that moves a curtain
behind the look; I already feel
dark and almost walked; I do not know how
I will arrive, looking for you, to the center
from our heart, and there tell you,
mother, what am I to do as long as I live,
Don't be orphaned as a child
Don't stay alone there in your sky
that you do not lack me as you lack me.




***




Because everything is the same and you know it
You have arrived at your house,
and now you would like to know what it is to be sitting,
what good is sitting just like a castaway
Among your poor everyday things.
Yes, now I would like to know
what are the nomadic cabinet and home that has never been turned on,
and the Bethlehem of Granda
- the Bethlehem that was a child when we still slept singing -
and what can this word do: now
this very word "now",
when the snow starts,
when the snow is born,
when the snow grows in a life that may be mine,
in a life that has no lasting memory,
who doesn't have tomorrow
who doesn't know just if it was carnation, if it was pink,
If it was lily towards the afternoon.





Yes now
I would like to know what this silence around me is for,
this silence that is like a mourning of single men,
this silence that I have
this silence
that when God wants it we get tired in the body,
it takes us
we fall asleep to die,
Because everything is the same and you know it.