If we talk about Julio Cortázar, probably the majority of people who know his work will identify his name with that of one of the greatest exponents of Hispanic literature of the last century.
This Argentine writer, although of Belgian origin (although he was born in Belgium, shortly after his birth his family would flee the First World War first to Switzerland, then to Barcelona and finally to Argentina, where he would grow up), who was also a translator and a important intellectual of his time, he will probably be best recognized for his short stories and one of his most important novels, Hopscotch.
Also because of his concern for the Argentine military regime that existed at his time, which can be observed in some of his works. But the truth is that although the best known of him is his literary work, the truth is that since his adolescence this author felt a great interest in poetry, having written various works of great beauty that reflect his concerns and the feeling of he. That is why throughout this article we are going to expose several of the best poems by Julio Cortázar
Below we leave you with a brief sample of poems by Julio Cortázar, which deal with areas as different as love, friendship, melancholy or heartbreak.
1. Happy New Year
Look, I don’t ask for much, just your hand, to have it like a little frog that sleeps happily like this. I need that door that you gave me to enter your world, that little piece of green sugar, roundly happy. Won’t you lend me your hand on this New Year’s Eve night of hoarse owls? You can not, for technical reasons.
Then I stretch it in the air, weaving each finger, the silky peach of the palm and the back, that country of blue trees. This is how I take it and hold it, as if a lot of the world depended on it, the succession of the four seasons, the crowing of roosters, the love of men.
This poem tells us about the longing for the beings we love and love in special moments, such as the arrival of a new year, and with whom we cannot be due to the distance that separates us. It tells us about memory and keeping the other in mind fresh in his memory.
2. After the holidays
And when everyone left and the two of us were left between empty glasses and dirty ashtrays, how beautiful it was to know that you were there like a haven, alone with me at the edge of the night, and that you lasted, you were more than time, you were the that he didn’t leave because the same pillow and the same warmth were going to call us again to wake up to the new day, together, laughing, disheveled.
Poetry that briefly expresses the sensations produced by being alone with the person you love to the person you trust and admire and with whom you want to spend your days.
As kids we called her: “la vedera” And she liked that we loved her, On her suffering wheel we drew so many hopscotches.
Later, more compadres, clicking our heels, We walked around the block with the bar, Whistling loudly so that the blonde From the warehouse came out, with her pretty braids To the window.
One day I had to go very far away But I didn’t forget the “vederas” But I didn’t forget the “vederas”. Here or there, I feel them in the tamangos Like the faithful caress of my land. How long will I walk around “ái” until I can see them again…!
This poetry is dedicated to the land that the author considered his own, Argentina, where he would spend a large part of his childhood and which he missed when he left the country due to the rise of the Argentine Peronist military dictatorship between 1976 and 1983.
4. Autumn Summary
In the vault of the afternoon each bird is a point of memory. It is sometimes surprising that the fervor of time returns, without a body it returns, it returns without reason; May beauty, so brief in its violent love, keep an echo for us in the descent of the night.
And so, what more than to sit with your arms down, your heart piled up and that taste of dust that was either rose or road. The flight exceeds the wing. Without humility, knowing that what remains was gained in the shadows by the work of silence; that the branch in the hand, that the dark tear are inheritance, the man with his history, the lamp that illuminates.
On this occasion the author makes a brief description of the sensations that the arrival of autumn and the passage of time produces in him, as well as the knowledge that everything will be reborn in spring
5. The slow heartbreak machine
The slow machine of heartbreak, the gears of reflux, the bodies that abandon the pillows, the sheets, the kisses, and standing in front of the mirror each one questioning themselves, no longer looking at each other, no longer naked for the other, I don’t love you anymore, my love.
A fairly clear poetry that expresses how little by little the magic and illusion in a relationship has been lost, to the point of having disappeared love
Tonight, looking for your mouth in another mouth, almost believing it, because that’s how blind this river is that turns me into a woman and submerges me between its eyelids, how sad it is to finally swim towards the shore of torpor knowing that torpor is that ignoble slave. who accepts fake coins, circulates them smiling.
Forgotten purity, how I would like to rescue that pain of Buenos Aires, that wait without pauses or hope. Only in my open house on the port I would begin to love you again, once again find you at the morning coffee without so many inalienable things having happened. And not having to accommodate myself from this oblivion that rises for nothing, to erase your little dolls from the blackboard and leave me nothing but a window without stars.
This poem tells us about the feeling of emptiness and hopelessness of using passions and vices as an escape, as well as the longing for better times after having ended a fulfilling and initially happy relationship.
7. Friends
In tobacco, in coffee, in wine, at the edge of the night they rise like those voices that sing in the distance without knowing what, along the way.
Lightly brothers of destiny, dioscuros, pale shadows, they scare away the flies of my habits, they keep me afloat amidst so much whirlpool.
The dead speak more but in the ear, and the living are a warm hand and a roof, the sum of what is gained and what is lost.
Thus one day in the boat of shadow, from so much absence my chest will shelter this ancient tenderness that names them.
One of Julio Cortázar’s poems dedicated to friendship, to the memory of those friends who mattered to us and with whom we share part of our life.
8. Night
Tonight my hands are black, my heart sweaty like after fighting to oblivion with the smoke centipedes.
Everything has been left there, the bottles, the boat, I don’t know if they loved me or if they expected to see me.
In the diary lying on the bed it says diplomatic meetings, an exploratory bloodletting, he happily beat it in four sets.
A tall forest surrounds this house in the center of the city, I know, I feel that a blind man is dying nearby.
My wife goes up and down a small staircase like a ship captain who distrusts the stars.
There is a cup of milk, papers, eleven at night. Outside it seems as if multitudes of horses are approaching the window behind me.
Sad poem that expresses the suffering and longing for what was left behind, probably derived from the sensations the author had when leaving Argentina.
9. Recurring ceremony
The totem animal with its nails of light, the eyes that gather the darkness under the bed, the mysterious rhythm of your breathing, the shadow that your sweat draws on your smell, the day already imminent.
Then I straighten up, still beaten by the waters of sleep, I return from a half-blind continent where you were also there but you were another, and when I consult you with my mouth and fingers, I scan the horizon of your flanks (you sweetly get angry, you want continue sleeping, you call me brute and stupid, you struggle laughing, you don’t let yourself be taken but it’s already late, a fire of skin and jet, the figures of the dream) the totemic animal at the foot of the bonfire with its nails of light and his wings of musk.
And then we wake up and it’s Sunday and February.
This poem expresses the hug and subsequent relationship under the sheets of a sleepy couple, after waking up
I touch your mouth, with a finger I touch the edge of your mouth, I draw it as if it came out of my hand, as if for the first time your mouth were half-open, and it is enough for me to close my eyes to undo everything and begin again, I give birth to the mouth that I desire, the mouth that my hand chooses and draws on your face, a mouth chosen among all, with sovereign freedom chosen by me to draw it with my hand on your face, and that by a chance that I do not seek to understand coincides exactly with your mouth that smiles below the one that my hand draws you.
You look at me, you look at me closely, closer and closer and then we play cyclops, we look at each other more and more closely and our eyes get bigger, they get closer to each other, they overlap and the cyclops look at each other, breathing in confusion, their mouths They meet and fight tepidly, biting each other with their lips, barely resting their tongues on their teeth, playing in their enclosures where a heavy air comes and goes with an old perfume and a silence.
Then my hands seek to sink into your hair, slowly caress the depth of your hair while we kiss as if we had a mouth full of flowers or fish, of lively movements, of dark fragrance. And if we bite ourselves, the pain is sweet, and if we drown in a brief and terrible simultaneous absorption of breath, that instantaneous death is beautiful. And there is only one saliva and only one flavor of ripe fruit, and I feel you tremble against me like a moon in the water.
This beautiful love poem tells us the sensations that a situation of intimacy and love produces and the sensations that awaken in us from looking at and kissing the person we love.
