Luis Cernuda Poems

From our old friendship
I never thought I'd ever remember again
How a whole tribe, such a strange group
...

The whole day's heat, distilled
Into a suffocating vapor, the sand releases.
Against the deep blue background of the night
Like an impossible drizzle of water,
...

If the Arab musician
Plucks the lute strings
With an eagle quill
To awaken the notes,
...

If the Arab musician
Plucks the lute strings
With an eagle quill
To awaken the notes,

What hand plucks
With what bird's quill
The wound in you
That awakens the word?
...

From our old friendship
I never thought I'd ever remember again
How a whole tribe, such a strange group
To me and maybe no less strange to you,
Adopted you.

But one of that tribe,
A professor and, according to him and others
Over there (which shows how far our land has fallen),
A poet, called you "my prince."
And I ask myself what you ever did that he
Could have come to think of you as his prince.

Academic claptrap? His writings are full of clichés
And conventional thinking. But his rapturous rhetoric
Does nothing to clarify our understanding
Of the mystery in your work, even though he's also called
A critic of our contemporary poetry.

The appropriation of you, which you wanted
Nothing to do with when you were alive,
Is what now seems to me so utterly strange.
The prince of a toad? Isn't it enough
For your countrymen to have killed you?

And now stupidity succeeds the crime.
...

The whole day's heat, distilled
Into a suffocating vapor, the sand releases.
Against the deep blue background of the night
Like an impossible drizzle of water,
The frozen splendor of the stars
Is proudly aligned alongside the full moon
Which, from a great height, disdainfully illumines
The remains of beasts in a boneyard.
Jackals can be heard howling in the distance.

There is no water, palm frond, underbrush or pond.
In its full splendor the moon looks down
On the pitiful Chimera, its stone corroded,
In its desert. Its missing wings, like stumps;
Its breasts and claws mutilated by time;
The hollows where its vanished nose and hair
Once curled are now home
To the obscene birds feeding
On desolation, on death.

When moonlight touches
The Chimera, it seems to come alive with a sob,
A moan that rises not from the ruin
But from the centuries rooted inside it, immortally
Crying over not being able to die, as the forms
That man gives life to always die. Dying is hard,
But not being able to die, if everything dies,
Is perhaps harder still. The Chimera murmurs at the moon
And its voice is so sweet it eases its desolation.

"No victims, no lovers. Where did the people go?
They no longer believe in me, and the unanswerable riddles
I posed, like the Sphinx, my rival and sister,
No longer tempt them. The divine survives,
In all its protean forms, even though the gods die.
That's why this deathless desire is alive in me,
Though my form is wasted, though I'm less than a shade;
A desire to see humanity humbled
In fear before me, before my tempting indecipherable secret.

"Man is like an animal tamed
By the whip. But how beautiful; his strength and his beauty,
Oh gods, how captivating. There is delight in man;
When man is beautiful, how delightful he is.
Centuries have passed since man deserted
Me and disdainfully forgot my secrets.
And while a few still pay me some attention,
I find no enchantment among the poets,
As my secret scarcely tempts them and I see in them no beauty.

"Skinny, flaccid, balding, bespectacled,
Toothless. That's the physical aspect
Of my former servant; and his character
Looks the same. Even so, not many seek my secret now,
Since they find in woman their personal sad Chimera.
And it's just as well I'm forgotten, because anyone
Changing infants' diapers and wiping noses while he thinks
About some critic's praise or bad review
Has no time to pay me any attention.

"Can they really believe in being poets
If they no longer have the power, the madness
To believe in me and my secret?
Better for them an academic chair
Than barrenness, ruin and death,
The generous recompense I gave my victims,
Once I had possession of their souls,
When men and poets still preferred
A cruel mirage to bourgeois certainty.

"Clearly for me those times were different
When with a light heart I danced happily through the labyrinth
Where I lost so many and so many others I endowed
With my eternal madness: joyful imagination, dreams of the future,
Hopes of love, sunny voyages.
But the prudent ones, the cautious men, I strangled
With my powerful claws, since a grain of madness
Is the salt of life. Now that I've been and gone,
I don't have any more promises for man."

The moon's reflection sliding
Over the deaf sand of the desert
Leaves the Chimera stranded among shadows,
The captive music of its sweet voice quieted.
And as the sea pulls back the tide
Leaving the beach denuded of its magic,
The voice's spell, pulled back, leaves the desert
Even more unwelcoming, its dunes
Blind, dulled without the old mirage.

Mute, in darkness, the Chimera seems to have retreated
Into the ancestral night of primal Chaos;
But neither gods, nor men, nor their creations
Are ever nullified once they've been; they must exist
Until the bitter end, disappearing into the dust.
Immobile, sad, the noseless Chimera can smell
The freshness of dawn, dawn of another day
When death will not have pity on it,
But its desolate existence will continue.
...

Bien sé yo que esta imagen
Fija siempre en la mente
No eres tú, sino sombra
Del amor que en mí existe
Antes que el tiempo acabe.

MI amor así visible me pareces,
Por mí dotado de esa gracia misma
Que me hace sufrir, llorar, desesperarme
De todo a veces, mientras otras
Me levanta hasta el cielo en nuestra vida,
Sintiendo las dulzuras que se guardan
Sólo a los elegidos tras el mundo.

Y aunque conozco eso, luego pienso
Que sin ti, sin el raro
Pretexto que me diste,
Mi amor, que afuera está con su ternura,
Allá dentro de mí hoy seguiría
Dormido todavía y a la espera
De alguien que, a su llamada,
Le hiciera al fin latir gozosamente.

Entonces te doy gracias te digo:
Para esto vine al mundo, y a esperarte;
Para vivir por ti, como tú vives
Por mí, aunque no lo sepas,
Por este amor tan hondo que te tengo.
...

I know well enough that this image
Fixed for ever in my mind
Is not you, but the shadow
Of love which exists in me
While my time is still not run out.

So you seem to me my love made visible,
Endowed by me with that very grace
Which makes me suffer, weep and despair
Of everything at times, but at others
LIfts me up to the zenith of our life,
Possessing the joys granted only
To the chosen few beyond the world.

And although I know this I then think
That without you, without the rare
Excuse which you gave me, my love,
Now a tenderness outside me,
Would today be there within
Sleeping still and lying in hope
Of someone who, at his call, at last
Would set it beating joyfully.

Then I thank you and say to you;
For this I came into the world, to await you;
To live because of you, as you live
Because of me, even though you do not know it,
Because of this deep love I have for you.
...

Tus ojos son de donde
La nieve no ha manchado
La luz y entre las palmas
El aire
Invisible es de claro.

Tu deseo es de donde
A los cuerpos se alía
Lo animal con la gracia
Secreta
De mirada y sonrisa.

Tu existir es de donde
Percibe el pensamiento,
Por la arena de mares
Amigos,
La eternidad en tiempo.
...

Your eyes are from where
The snow has not stained
The light and among the palms
The air's so bright
It is invisible.

Your desire is from where
The secret animal grace
Of glance and smile
Is allied
With bodies.

Your existence is from where
Thought perceives,
By the sand of friendly
Seas,
Eternity in time.
...