14 love poems by Latin American authors

From the pen of Latin American poets, we present a selection of beautiful poems in which love is the force, the object and the drive. This is how authors such as Neruda, Benedetti, Storni, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Vallejo, Paz, Borges, Burgos, Sabines, Nervo, Montejo, Alegría and Nazoa represent it.

Those of us who have been touched by the wing of this restless bird of love, which one day hides from us and another eats our hand, we can understand the register of loving emotions that this selection of poems brings to U.S. We review the dream for the ideal love, the anxiety of waiting, the joy of reciprocated love, the love consummation and, why not, vain loves that end up being, hardly, funny stories that tell.

About idyllic love

Her first love, her first intuition, always comes in the form of an idea, a suspicion, a kind of prophecy that announces that we will inevitably fall into a mass of confused emotions. This selection of poems tells us about this concern. The voice that asks love to move away speaks, the lover who is already imprisoned who must hide his imaginary shackles speaks, the one who falls before his eyes speaks of the beloved as a hypnotic game, she speaks the voice of secret and forbidden love, and speaks, finally, the voice of a desperate lover ruled by her anxiety.

Contains a content fantasy with decent love

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648-1695)
Mexico

The New Spain writer leaves us this poem in which she confronts us with love as a sweet seduction and threat at the same time. She sings, not to the person, but to love as an energy that inevitably attracts with the force of a tyrant.

Stop, shadow of my elusive good,
image of the spell that I love the most,
beautiful illusion for whom I happily die,
sweet fiction for whom I live.

If the magnet of your attractive thanks
serve my chest of obedient steel,
Why do you make me fall in love, flattering,
if you have to mock me then runaway?

More emblazon can not satisfied
that your tyranny triumphs over me;
that although you leave the narrow bond mocked

that your fantastic form belted,
it does not matter to mock arms and chest
if my fantasy carves you prison.

It may interest you: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: biography, work and contributions of the New Spain writer.

The Lover

Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986)
Argentina

When the soul finds itself in love, the world loses its total importance. The lover's attention is totally focused on the loved one, so that her daily life is nothing more than the pretense that things are taking their natural course. But for the loved one, within his thought, only one thing matters: the loved one.

Moons, ivories, instruments, roses,
lamps and Dürer's line,
the nine digits and the changing zero,
I must pretend that such things exist.

I must pretend that in the past they were
Persepolis and Rome and that an arena
subtle measured the fortunes of the battlement
that the centuries of iron undid.

I must fake the guns and the pyre
of the epic and the heavy seas
that gnaw from the earth the pillars.

I must pretend there are others. Is a lie.
Only you are. You my misfortune
and my happiness, inexhaustible and pure.

Your eyes

Octavio Paz (1914-1991)
Mexico

For the lover, the eyes of his loved one are the wells in which he reflects his feelings, concerns, hopes and fears. The lover contemplates, as if spellbound, the captivating gaze of the other. The gaze found is a link, an interpellation, a question and an answer at the same time; it is mystery and revelation. It is, therefore, an unfathomable abyss.

Your eyes are the homeland of lightning and tears,
speaking silence,
storms without wind, sea without waves,
birds imprisoned, golden beasts asleep,
wicked topaz as the truth,
or toño in a clearing in the forest where the light sings on the shoulder of a tree and all the leaves are birds,
beach that the morning finds constellated with eyes,
basket of fire fruits,
lie that feeds,
mirrors of this world, doors of the hereafter,
calm pulsation of the sea at noon,
absolute blinking,
paramo.

I will keep you quiet

Julia de Burgos (1914-1953)
Puerto Rico

In the distance, in the impossibility, the lover hides his love, as if it were a shame, as if it were unworthy, as if it were too pretentious. The humble and lonely loving soul is content in following, in the brevity of the inspiring moment, in the silence that contemplates the loved one with the reverence of a sacred being.

I will follow you forever, silent and fugitive,
through the dark streets milled with nostalgia,
or on the smiling stars of rhythms
where your deepest glances rock its history.

My steps unleashed from directions and borders
they do not find the shores that are linked to your life.
Seek the limitless my love, and my songs
back to the static, they break into your soul.

Peaceful of longings, when the world takes you,
I will bend my instinct and love your footsteps;
and it will be simple leaves that I will unravel
between still memories, with your distant form.

Attentive to the infinite that in my life already appears,
With emotion high and ambition sealed,
I will follow you forever, silent and fugitive,
through dark streets, or over white stars.

Forbidden love

Cesar Vallejo (1892-1938)
Peru

César Vallejo touches our hearts with this poem to outlawed love. Vallejo reveals the paradox of life: love, a divine mandate, paradoxically becomes an occasion for sin. What mystery is this that makes love holy and sinful, redemption and condemnation ?!

You go up sparkling lips and dark circles!
Through your veins I go up, like a wounded dog
that seeks the refuge of soft sidewalks.

Love, in the world you are a sin!
My kiss on the sparkling tip of the horn
of the devil; my kiss that is sacred creed!
Spirit in the horópter that passes
Pure in his blasphemy!
The heart that begets the brain!
that passes to yours, through my sad mud.

Platonic stamen
that exists in the chalice where your soul exists!
Some sinister penitent silence?
Do you listen to it? Innocent flower!
… And to know that where there is no Our Father,
Love is a sinful Christ!

It is not that I die of love

Jaime Sabines (1926-1999)
Mexico

The lover experiences the oppression of anxiety, the need for the other, the anguish of waiting. It is an urgency that overwhelms, that cries out for consummation, that part, that tears. It is the waiting that becomes prison, it is the absence as a burden, the death of fullness.

It is not that he dies of love, I die of you.
I die of you, love, of love of you,
of my urgency of my skin of you,
of my soul, of you and of my mouth
and how unbearable I am without you.

I die of you and me, I die of both,
of us, of that,
torn, party,
I die, I die to you, we die it.

We die in my room where I'm alone
in my bed where you are missing,
in the street where my arm is empty,
in the cinema and the parks, the trams,
the places where my shoulder
accustom your head
and my hand your hand
and all of me know you as myself.

We die in the place that I have lent to the air
so that you are out of me,
and in the place where the air ends
when I put my skin on you
and we know each other in ourselves,
separated from the world, blissful, penetrated,
and true, endless.

We die, we know it, they ignore it, we die
between the two, now, separated,
from each other, daily,
falling into multiple statues,
in gestures that we do not see,
in our hands they need us.

We die, love, I die in your womb
that I neither bite nor kiss,
on your very sweet and lively thighs,
in your endless flesh, I die of masks,
of dark and incessant triangles.

I die of my body and of your body,
of our death, love, I die, we die.
In the well of love at all hours,
inconsolable, screaming,
inside of me, I mean, I call you,
Those who are born call you, those who come
from behind, from you, those who come to you.
We die, love, and we do nothing
but to die more, hour after hour,
and write to us and talk to us and die.

About reciprocated love

Love finds, sooner or later, a match for him. Even for a moment, the joy of reciprocated love renews the lover's gaze. Sometimes this joy is disturbing to the gray world. Sometimes this joy is everyday strength. "My holy habit" Unamuno called his wife. Other times, joy is conjured by the words "I love you." Others, love is expressed as a submission. The lover abandons all resistance and surrenders. All of it is fullness.

I love you

Mario Benedetti (1920-2009)
Uruguay

The love of the poet is the beloved object, a daily accomplice, a watchman of dreams, a morning inspiration. The other completes the mystery of the lover. The other is no longer represented as a subjugating force, but as encouragement, commitment and daily life. love is not prison, but freedom mutually achieved in the shared horizon, in the causes sought by both.

Your hands are my caress
my everyday chords
I love you because your hands
they work for justice

If I love you, it's because you are
my love my accomplice and everything
and in the street side by side
We are much more than two

Your eyes are my spell
against the bad day
I love you for your look
what looks and sows future

Your mouth that is yours and mine
your mouth is not wrong
I love you because your mouth
knows how to scream rebellion

If I love you, it's because you are
my love my accomplice and everything
and in the street side by side
We are much more than two

and for your sincere face
and your wandering step
And your tears for the world
because you are a people I love you

and because love is not a halo
nor candid moral
and because we are a couple
who knows that she is not alone

I want you in my paradise
that is to say that in my country
people live happy
even if I don't have permission

If I love you, it's because you are
my love my accomplice and everything
and in the street side by side
We are much more than two.

I like it when you shut up (Poem XV)

Pablo Neruda (1904-1973)
chili

The lover likes to contemplate the object of his love. Thus, in the silence, he observes, details, reels, evokes the fantasies of time, abounds in the meanings of the mystery that lies under his eyes. But when the loved object speaks, the joy of the renewed encounter breaks out.

I like you when you shut up because you are absent,
and you hear me from afar, and my voice does not touch you.
It seems that your eyes have flown
and it seems that a kiss closes your mouth.
As all things are filled with my soul
you emerge from things, full of my soul.
Dream butterfly, you look like my soul,
and you look like the word melancholy.

I like you when you are quiet and you are distant.
And you're like complaining, lullaby butterfly.
And you hear me from afar, and my voice does not reach you:
Allow me to hush myself with your silence.

Let me also speak to you with your silence
clear as a lamp, simple as a ring.
You are like the night, silent and constellated.
Your silence is from the stars, so far and simple.

I like you when you are silent because you are absent.
Distant and painful as if you had died.
A word then, a smile is enough.
And I'm glad, glad it's not true.

The first kiss

Amado Nervo (1870-1919)
Mexico

The joy of the first kiss becomes absolute in the lover, who disturbs the world around him, tired and weary, with the news that he has discovered a wonderful, saving formula.

I was saying goodbye... and throbbing
close my lip to your red lips,
"See you tomorrow," you whispered;
I looked into your eyes for a moment
and you closed your eyes without thinking
and I gave you the first kiss: I raised my forehead
enlightened by my true happiness.

I went out to the street joyfully
while you were leaning out the door
looking at me fired up and smiling.
I turned my face in sweet rapture,
and without even stopping looking at you,
I jumped into a fast moving tram;
and I stared at you for a moment
and smiling with the whole soul,
and even more I smiled at you... And on the tram
to an anxious, sarcastic and curious,
who looked at us both with irony,
I said to him getting happy:
- «Forgive me, Lord, this joy.»

Two words

Alfonsina Storni (1892-1938)
Argentina

There are words tired from so much being said in the air. The love speech is often tinged with common places. But there is a ritual, a certain way of looking, a certain tone in the lips, which are manifest proof of the revived meaning of those two words: "I love you."

Tonight in my ear you have said two words to me
Common Two tired words
To be said. Words
That old are new.

Two words so sweet that the moon that walked
Filtering between the branches
It stopped in my mouth. So sweet two words
That an ant walks around my neck and I don't try

Move to kick her out.
So sweet two words
What do I say without wanting to? Oh, how beautiful, life !?
So sweet and so meek

What fragrant oils they spill on the body.
So sweet and so beautiful
How nervous my fingers
They move towards the sky imitating scissors.
Oh my fingers would like
Cut out stars.

You have me in your hands

Jaime Sabines (1926-1999)
Mexico

Love has taken a step forward. It is not the spell of the first encounter. It is the alliance arising from mutual, deep knowledge. The lover knows himself discovered in his essence by the loved one. Nothing can hide you. Being loved is presence, intimacy, redemption.

You have me in your hands
and you read me the same as a book.
You know what I do not know
and you tell me the things that I don't tell myself.
I learn from you more than me.
You are like a miracle of all hours,
like a pain without a place.
If you were not a woman to be my friend.
Sometimes I want to talk to you about women
that next to you I chase.
You are like forgiveness
and I am like your son.
What good eyes you have when you're with me?
How distant you make yourself and how absent
when I sacrifice you to loneliness!
Sweet like your name, like a fig
you wait for me in your love until I arrive.
You are like my home
you are like my death, my love.

Corporeal love

Love is consumed between two: it becomes flesh, at least for an instant. Touch, eroticism, sensuality and sexuality are also symbolic expression of the union of two souls, when their experience is a response to the imaginary love. Poets, seduced, seduce us ...

The shipwreck

Eugenio Montejo (1938-2008)
Venezuela

For the lover, the consummation of love seems like an ocean in which bodies are happily shipwrecked. A twine unit, a new body, a vital death.

The shipwreck of a body in another body
when in her night, suddenly, she goes down ...
The bubbles rising from the bottom
up to the embroidered fold of the sheets.

Black hugs and screams in the shade
to die in each other,
until it disappears into the dark
without resentment taking possession of this death.

The linked bodies that capsize
under the same lonely storm,
the fight against time no longer time,
palpating the infinite here so close,
the desire that she devours with her jaws,
the moon that consoles and is no longer enough.

The final shipwreck against the night,
without beyond the water, but the water,
without another paradise or another hell
that the fleeting epitaph of the foam
and the meat that dies in another meat.

That kiss

Claribel Alegría (1924-2018)
Nicaragua-Salvador

The body is not just the body. It is a symbol, an alliance, a key. The loving soul sees in the kiss the door to an unnoticed abyss ...

That kiss yesterday
opened the door for me
and all the memories
that I believed ghosts
they got up stubborn
to bite me.

Love and humor stories

Looking for love, there are those who go wrong, especially those who seek love in appearances. There are many stories of love illusions that quickly find their end and become only funny stories. We dedicate this to those who, however daring, are caught up in annoying tasks.

Trouble of an attack

Achilles Nazoa (1920-1976)
Venezuela

Counting - I'm going for a hundred -
to fall asleep,
hungry, lonely, bored,
I come from Cagua by train.

We stopped next to the platform
of a little station,
and there a hembro rises
of such splendid packaging,
that, initiated the plan of attack,
I am looking for a conversation.

I don't have to strain
to "find a fight",
because she also wishes,
apparently, talk.

Take it to begin with
because of the heat,
and in the absence of something better
with what to go on,
he sticks to talking about a singer
which is my same color.

Trying to contain
that dreadful torrent
that for being funny
I myself have started running,

I offer: - Do you want to read?
And she, alarmed: - What a horror!
If you only knew, sir,
book does not happen to me ...
And what I have in my house
"The Inklings of Love".

And the endless tale begins
around a certain comic
that his little sister Enriqueta
it is being read in “Pepín”.

To wear lipstick
turn off the engine a little;
but with greater fury
he comes back instantly
Again with the singer
that she is the same color!

I already have the feeling
that, pinned to the ear,
the same as a crab
I take the lady in question.

Oh reader, out of compassion,
mobilize your knowledge
and tell me what should I do
against her relentless talk!
Without having to murder her,
How do I shut up this woman?

It may interest you: Short love poems commented