SELECTION OF POEMS

RAFAEL DE LEÓN

Ballad of that son I did not have with you

It could have been

beautiful as a hyacinth

with your eyes and your mouth

and your skin the color of wheat,

but with a heart

big and crazy like mine.

I could have gone,

Sunday afternoons,

from my hand and yours,

in his sailor suit,

showing an anchor on the arm

and on the cap an ancient name.

I would have gone out for you.

in the sweet and in the alive,

in the openness of laughter

and in the clarity of instinct,

and to me... maybe to go out

in the sad and in the lyrical,

and in this clumsy way

 to see everything differently.

Oh, what a room with toys,

love, I would have had!

Three horses, two swords,

a green pine car

a train with four stations,

a boat, a bird, a nest,

and one hundred lead soldiers,

dressed in silver and gold.

Oh, what a room full of toys,

love, I would have had!

Do you remember that afternoon,

under the green of the pines,

what you told me: -- What glory

when we have a child!

Your waist was trembling

like a captured pigeon,

and nine moons of shadow

they shone in your delirium.

I could hear you, distant,

lost among my verses,

but I felt it on my back

to run a shiver...

I repeated like an echo:

When we have a child!...

You were already singing among dreams

 mountain bananas and thyme,

and you were washing diapers

by the banks of a river.

Hey, architect of illusions

I was achieving a balance

a tower of hopes

with a balcony of sighs.

Oh, what glory, love, what glory

when we have a child!

In your cedar dresser

our trousseau has gone cold,

between lily and apple,

between rosemary and quince.

How pale the lace,

how unfunny the dresses are,

what scentless handkerchiefs

and what love without blood!

Your white bridal veil,

for your forgetfulness and for my forgetfulness,

it was a Camino de Santiago,

painful and yellow.

You have married someone else,

I did the same with another one.

oaths and words

they are dry and withered

in an ancient almanac
 without Saturdays or Sundays.

Now you go down to the promenade,

surrounded by your children,

giving the arm to... the frock coat

What does your husband wear.

They call you Mrs. Manuela,

you wear gloves and a fan,

and three chins cut you off

in the throat the sigh.

We greet each other from afar,

like two strangers;

your husband goes up and down

the top hat; I bow,

and you smile without joy,

in a sad and ridiculous way.

But I don't realize.

that we have aged,

because I still love you

the same or more than at the beginning.

I see you like then,

with your lily waist,

a jasmine between the teeth,

the color of wheat

and that voice that said:

When we have a child!...

Those rainy afternoons,

 when you move the bobbins,

and I walk by your street

with my sorrow and with my book

you say, trembling, between your teeth,

wrapped in the curtains:

Oh, if I were with that man

I would have had a child!...

Ballad of the Three Daggers

I have bought three daggers

so you can give me death...

The first, indifference,

smile that comes and goes

and that penetrates the flesh

like a snow rose.

The second, of betrayal;

my back already senses it,

leaving without spring

a tree of green veins.

The last cold steel,

for if you have courage

and you leave me, face to face,

 love, in the flesh.

I have bought three daggers

for you to give me death...

Encounter

I stumbled upon you in spring,

a thin and fine sunny afternoon,

and you were on my back, a vine

and at my waist, ribbon and serpent.

You gave me the softness of your wax

and I gave you the salt from my saline.

We sail together, without a flag,

through the sea of the rose and the thorn.

And then, to die, to become two rivers

without oleanders, dark and empty,

for the clumsy mouth of the people...

Behind, two moons, two swords,

two waists, two mouths linked

and two arches of love from the same bridge.

 Doubt

Why do you have dark circles this afternoon?

Where were you, love, at dawn,

when I searched for your cowardly paleness

in the sunless snow of the pillow?

Your lip line is cold,

cold for some poorly paid kiss;

kiss that I don't know who would give you,

but I am sure that they have given you.

What black velvet makes you blush

the profile of your eyes of good wheat?

What blue of vein or map condemns you

the honey whip of my punishment?

And why did you cause me this sorrow?

If you know, oh, love!, that I am your friend?

Sentinel of love

I placed you behind the wall of my forehead

to have you better kept like this

and I watched over you, oh love!, daily

 with bayonet and soldier's helmet.

I loved you so much, so much, that people

he pointed at me just like a pariah;

But how happy I was on the bridge

of your love, oh, my overflowing river!

One day you told me: -I don't love you...

and my wall of glass and steel

to your voice came to the ground in a rubble.

The saliva in my mouth turned into snow,

and I died like a brief hyacinth

leaning on the rose of your shoulder.

Sorrow and Joy of Love

Look how it turns out for me

the skin, when I remember you...

It rises up my throat

a river of fresh blood,

from the wound that crosses,

from one side to the other of my body.

I have nails in my hands,

and knives in the fingers,

and on my temple, a crown

 made of black pins.
Look how it turns out for me

the skin every time I remember

that I am a married man

And yet, I love you!

Between your house and my house

there is a wall of silence;

of ortigas and of prickly pears,

of sand and wind,

of dark honeysuckles

and glass in ambush.

Awall so that never

the town can jump it,

what is wandering around the key

that keeps our secret.

I know well that you love me,

and you know that I love you,

and we both know it,

and no one can know it...

Oh, sorrow, little sorrow, sorrow

of our love in silence!

Oh, what joy, joy

to love you as I love you!

When alone at night,

I keep your memory.

I would knock down the wall
 what separates our dream.

I would break with my hands

from your cancel the irons

just to see you by my side,

torment of my torments,

and I would be kissing you

until taking your breath away.

And then... what do I care

to stay in your arms, dead!...

Oh, what joy and what sorrow

to love you as I do!

Our love is agony,

grief, anguish, weeping, fear

death, sorrow, blood, life,

moon, rose, sun and wind.

It is dying with every step

and keep living, then,

with a pointed sword

always looking at the ceiling.

I leave my house for the countryside.

only with your thought,

for caressing alone

the fabric of that handkerchief

that you dropped on a Sunday

when you were coming from the village,

and that I have never told you,

 my life, that I have it;

and I squeeze it between my hands

the same as a new lemon,

and I look at your initials,

and I repeat them in silence

so that not even the field knows

what I am wanting from you...

Yesterday, in the New Plaza,

life, don't do it again

I saw you kiss my boy,

to my child, the youngest,

and how would you kiss him/her,

Oh, Virgin of Remedies!

what was the first time

You gave me a kiss.

I ran home.
I lifted my child from the ground

and without anyone seeing me,

like a lurking thief,

on her poppy face

your kiss bit my mouth,

Oh, what joy and what sorrow

to love you like I love you!

Look: no matter what happens,

even if the firmament sinks,

eventhoughyournameandmine
 they trample on it on the ground,

and even if the earth opens up,

even if the people know it

and raise our flag

of love to the four winds,

keep loving me like this

torment of my torment!

Oh, what joy and what sorrow

to love you as I love you!

Four Sonnets of Love

Saying 'I love you' with a hushed voice

and to kiss other lips softly,

it's not about having being, it's about finding the source

what the loving mouth gives us.

A kiss like that means nothing,

it's ashes of love, not boiling lava,

that in love one must always be present,

morning, afternoon, night, and dawn.

What love is more colt than lamb,

more thorn than flower, sun, not star,

 dog in the heart, live flame...
What we have is not like this, why deceive ourselves,

what we have is to sail without meeting each other,

adrift, love, adrift.

II

They warned me in time: be careful,

look, he lies more than he blinks,

that his kind does not suit you,

it is one of the worst on the market.

That there are many mouths that he has kissed

and maybe it pulls you in its tide

and then I won't rent you the task

to erase the present and the past.

But I got lost in your gardens

letting the mastiffs bark,

and it already fell under the claw of your kisses

I hung on your mouth with madness

without fear of dying in the adventure,

and your love pierced me to the bone.

III

Another Sunday without your gaze,

letting myself die among the people

what happens and what passes indifferent

to my desperate love song.

A chestnut mare of jealousy

Run filled with fury across my forehead

 and gallops from east to west

in search of your false alibi...

Because I know more than at this hour

there's someone who devours your lips

and share the strains of your wine.

But, since I am afraid of losing you,

I do not delve into the tangle of your entanglement.

and I commune with millstones.

IV
I weigh little in your life, almost nothing,

like a faint whisper, like a breeze,

like a sip of fresh lemonade

drunk without heat and in a hurry.

I do not advance the rhythm of your footsteps,

I distract the salvation of your mass,

and on your forehead of unveiled nard

I don't even reach a memory or a smile.

Yet you are everything, my madness,

my mountain, my song, my temperate sea,

the pulse of my blood, the plain

where I sleep without dream or sin,

and the scaffolding where I lean with tenderness

this love that was born already failed.

 I need you

I need you, your presence,

of your joyful, enamored madness.

I can't stand that my home is overwhelmed.

the shadow without lips of your absence.

I need you, your clemency,

from the fury of the light of your gaze;

that red and tremendous flame

what you impose on me, love, as penance.

I need your reins of sanity.

and even though sometimes your pride tortures me

I do not resign from my position as a lover.

I need the honey of your tenderness,

the metal of your voice, your warmth.

I need you, I need you.

I was told yesterday...

They told me yesterday

the double-edged tongues,

you got married a month ago...

 and I felt so at ease.

Anyone else, in my case,

he would have started to cry...

Yo, crossing my arms,

I said I didn't care.

No shooting myself.

neither to entangle me in curses

he/she stoned you with sighs

the glasses of your balconies.

Have you gotten married? Good luck!

Live a hundred years happily

and at the hour of death...

God may not hold it against you!

What if at the foot of the altars

my name has been erased from you,

for the glory of my mother

that I hold no grudge against you

because, without being your husband

neitheryourboyfriend,noryourlover,

I am... the one who has loved you the most...

That’s enough for me!

Blow
 The word "money" was heard.

and you threw it all away

and instead of saying: "I love you",

I asked you: -What do you want to charge?-

You valued the roses,

pricing the garden

and they began taking things

a metallic and ruinous tone.

Even though this truth pierces me,

I prefer to know the truth:

that per month, I pay for electricity, I pay for the house

and I pay for happiness.

Dead of Love

My arm doesn't know it, nor my leg,

neither the thread of my voice, nor my waist,

neither does the moon know that it is internal

in my garden of love and warmth.

I am dead, yes, like a tender one

rose, or a gazelle on the plain,

like a round water in the cistern

 or a dog with yellow teeth.

And today, which is Corpus, Sir, I have walked

my illuminated love corpse,

like a sinister scarecrow.

People have looked at me without amazement.

and none has removed the hat

to pray a sad Our Father.

Kindness of Astor Campello