War Poetry by Miguel Hernandez

War poetry that touches us deeply in a period of serious turmoil that takes us back to dark, almost forgotten ages.

SONGS AND ROMANCES OF ABSENCES

Through the streets I leave

something I’m picking up:

pieces of my life

come from far away

I go winged to agony

crawling I see myself

at the threshold, at the bottom

latent from birth

I CALL YOUTH

blood that does not overflow,

youth who do not dare,

neither is it blood, nor is it youth,

They neither shine nor bloom.

Bodies that are born defeated,

vanquished and gray die:

they come with the age of a century,

and they are old when they come.

War Sadness

SITTING ON THE DEAD

Sitting on the dead

who have been silent in two months,

kiss empty shoes

and rabidly grab

the hand of the heart

and the soul that maintains it.

Let my voice go up to the mountains

and come down to earth and thunder,

that asks my throat

from now and forever.

LAST SONG

Painted, not empty:

my house is painted

of the colour of the great

passions and misfortunes.

will return from tears

where was she taken

with his deserted table,

with his dilapidated bed.

Kisses will bloom

on the pillows.

And around the bodies

will raise the sheet

its intense creeper

nocturnal, scented

The hate fades

behind the window.

It will be the soft claw.

Give me hope.

SAD WARS

Sad wars

if the company is not love.

Sad, sad

sad weapons

if not the words.

Sad, sad

sad men

if they don’t die of love.

Sad, sad

THE LIGHTNING THAT NEVER STOPS

Will this ray that inhabits me not cease

the heart of exasperated beasts

and of wrathful forges and blacksmiths

where the coolest metal withers?

Will this stubborn stalactite not cease

to cultivate their hard hair

like swords and stiff bonfires

to my heart that moans and screams?

Stop The War

HANDS

Two kinds of hands meet in life,

They spring from the heart, burst through the arms,

they jump, and end on the wounded light

to blows, to claws.

The hand is the tool of the soul, its message,

and the body has its fighting branch in it.

Raise up, move your hands in a great swell,

men of my seed.

WINDS OF THE PEOPLE CARRY ME

If I die, let me die

with your head held high.

Dead and twenty times dead,

the mouth against the grass,

I will grit my teeth

and determined beard.

Singing I wait for death,

that there are nightingales that sing

above the rifles

and in the midst of battles.

See also:

https://dimidesan.com/alone-by-edgar-allan-poe/

https://dimidesan.com/oscar-wilde-poem/

https://www.cervantes.es/bibliotecas_documentacion_espanol/biografias/manila_miguel_hernandez.htm