Other Poets

A collection of personal favorites from different poets. If you know any poems from other poets that you'd like to contribute to this site, email me and I may post them. alex@adowns.com



RIMA XLIX 

Alguna vez la encuentro por el mundo, 
y pasa junto a mí;
y pasa sonriéndose, y yo digo: 
"Cómo puede reír?" 

Luego asoma a mi labio otra sonrisa, 
máscara del dolor,
y entonces pienso: "Acaso ella se ríe, 
como me río yo?"
-Gustavo Becquer



RIMA XXX

Asomaba a sus ojos una lágrima
y a mi labio una frase de perdón;
habló el orgullo y se enjugó su llanto,
y la frase en mis labios expiró.

Yo voy por un camino; ella, por otro;
pero, al pensar en nuestro mutuo amor,
yo digo aún: "Por qué callé aquel día?"
Y ella dirá:  "Por qué no lloré yo?"
-Gustavo Becquer



RIMA XLIV

Como en un libro abierto
leo de tus pupilas en el fondo.
A qué fingir el labio
risas que se desmienten con los ojos?

Llora!  No te avergüences
de confesar que me quisiste un poco.
Llora!  Nadie nos mira.
Ya ves; yo soy un hombre... y también lloro.
-Gustavo Becquer



RIMA XLII

Cuando me lo contaron sentí el frío
de una hoja de acero en las entrañas;
me apoyé contra el muro, y un instante
la conciencia perdí de dónde estaba.

Cayó sobre mi espíritu la noche,
en ira y en piedad se anegó el alma.
¡Y entonces comprendí por qué se llora,
y entonces comprendí por qué se mata!

Pasó la nube de dolor.... Con pena
logré balbucear breves palabras...
¿Quién me dio la noticia?... Un fiel amigo...
Me hacía un gran favor... Le di las gracias.
-Gustavo Becquer



EPIGRAMA

Al perderte yo a ti, tú y yo hemos perdido:
yo, porque tú eras lo que yo más amaba,
y tú, porque yo era el que te amaba más.
Pero de nosotros dos, tú pierdes más que yo:
porque yo podré amar a otras como te amaba a ti,
pero a ti no te amarán como te amaba yo.
-Ernesto Cardenal



The Bee Box

In this small box, my love,
you'll not find a ring, but instead,
a brave little bee.
He'll be dead by morn,
having given his life defending his flowers
against me.
I felt his sting while picking the small,
purple pansies growing wild along the roadside,
in hopes of an afternoon bouquet for you.
And I grieved the sting, more for him than me,
knowing full well the price he paid for my small pain.
And I allowed him his victory,
leaving his flowers as a memory,
and brought you instead this brave little bee,
who proves there is love even in the smallest of things.
- Lowell Parker



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Theodore Roosevelt was the very symbol of U.S. incursions into Latin America that outraged even nonpolitical poets such as Nicaraguan poet, RUBEN DARIO (1867-1916). Latin Americans had admired the energy, wealth, and democracy of the United States, but now they feared the bullying of their northern neighbor. President Roosevelt supported a 1903 revolution in Panama that resulted in the annexation by the U.S. of territory for the Panama Canal, and in 1904 proclaimed a corollary to the Monroe Doctrine which justified the use of the U.S. military to “police” Latin America.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TO ROOSEVELT

It is with the voice of the Bible, or the verse of Walt Whitman,
that I should come to you, Hunter,
primitive and modern, simple and complicated,
with something of Washington and more of Nimrod.

You are the United States,
you are the future invader
of the naive America that has Indian blood,
that still prays to Jesus Christ and still speaks Spanish.

You are the proud and strong exemplar of your race;
you are cultured, you are skillful; you oppose Tolstoy.
And breaking horses, or murdering tigers,
you are an Alexander-Nebuchadnezzar.
(You are a professor of Energy
as today’s madmen say.)

You think that life is fire,
that progress is eruption,
that wherever you shoot
you hit the future.

No.

The United States is potent and great.
When you shake there is a deep tremblor
that passes through the enormous vertebrae of the Andes.
If you clamor, it is heard like the roaring of a lion.
Hugo already said it to Grant: The stars are yours.
(The Argentine sun, ascending, barely shines,
and the Chilean star rises…) You are rich.
You join the cult of Hercules to the cult of Mammon,
and illuminating the road of easy conquest,
Liberty raises its torch in New York.

But our America, that has had poets
since the ancient times of Netzahualcoyotl,
that has walked in the footprints of great Bacchus
who learned Pan’s alphabet at once;
that consulted the stars, that knew Atlantis
whose resounding name comes to us from Plato,
that since the remote times of its life
has lived on light, on fire, on perfume, on love,
America of the great Montezuma, of the Inca,
the fragrant America of Christopher Columbus,
Catholic America, Spanish America,
the America in which noble Cuauhtemoc said:
“I’m not in a bed of roses”; that America
that trembles in hurricanes and lives on love,
it lives, you men of Saxon eyes and barbarous soul.
And it dreams. And it loves, and it vibrates, and it is the daughter of the Sun.
Be careful. Viva Spanish America!
There are a thousand cubs loosed from the Spanish lion.
Roosevelt, one would have to be, through God himself,
the-fearful Rifleman and strong Hunter,
to manage to grab us in your iron claws.

And, although you count on everything, you lack one thing: God!

-Ruben Dario