The 25 best poems of Miguel Hernández

Poet, playwright and great character in Spanish literature, this is how the life and work of Miguel Hernández (1910-1942) is described, a young man who died at an early age from tuberculosis. Nonetheless, his works of classic romance endure even to the present day, enchanting readers and inspiring other figures of lyrical literature.

• We recommend you read: "The 30 best poems about hope"

Great poems by Miguel Hernández

It not only represents the reflection of the beauty of the letters, but it is also a symbol of struggle, as he pursued his passion against the opinions of a father who mocked his liking for books and what he did not let a dictator government shut him up. In commemoration of his history and his sensitivity to verse, we have brought the best poems of his authorship.

1. Love was rising between us

Love was rising between us

like the moon between the two palm trees

that they never hugged.

The intimate rumor of the two bodies

towards the lullaby a wave brought,

but the hoarse voice was gripped,

the lips were stony.

The urge to girdle moved the flesh,

cleared up the inflamed bones,

but the arms, wanting to lie down, died in the arms.

Love passed, the moon, between us

and devoured lonely bodies.

And we are two ghosts that are looking for each other

and they are far away.

• A beautiful poem that talks about the intoxicating passion that surrounds lovers.

2. He didn't want to be

Did not know the meeting

of man and woman.

The loving hair

could not flourish.

Stopped his senses

refusing to know

and they descended diaphanous

before the dawn.

He saw his morning cloudy

and he stayed in his yesterday.

He did not want to be.

• There are those who, out of fear, refuse to experience love and give themselves to a person, without knowing the loneliness that awaits them later.

3. First song

The field has been withdrawn

to see pounce

twitchingly at the man.

What a gulf between the olive tree

and man is discovered!

The animal that sings:

the animal that can

cry and take root,

he remembered his claws.

Claws that clad

of softness and flowers,

but that, finally, naked

in all its cruelty.

They crackle in my hands.

Get away from them, son.

I am willing to sink them,

willing to project them

on your light flesh.

I have returned to the tiger.

Move away, or I'll tear you apart.

Today love is death

and man stalks man.

• Love can also destroy us, since we are vulnerable to a person who, no matter how much we know, we will never know if he will ever harm us.

4. Less your belly

Less your belly,

everything is confusing.

Less your belly,

everything is future

fleeting, past

barren, cloudy.

Less your belly,

everything is hidden.

Less your belly,

all insecure,

all last,

dust without a world.

Less your belly,

everything is dark.

Less your belly

clear and deep.

• A poem that talks about the security found in the womb, which is the only one capable of giving life, even in the midst of chaos and war.

5. Kissing, woman

Kissing, woman,

in the sun, is kissing

In all life.

Lips rise

electrically

vibrant rays,

with all the glare

one sun out of four.

Kiss the moon

woman is kissing

in all death.

Lips descend

with all the moon

asking for the sunset of him,

worn and icy

and in four pieces.

• A kiss means sealing a fact, the realization of feelings and the beginning of a love story.

6. Mouth

Mouth that drags my mouth:

mouth that you have dragged me:

mouth that you come from far away

to illuminate me with rays.

Alba that you give to my nights

a red and white glow.

Mouth populated with mouths:

bird full of birds

Song that returns the wings

up and down.

Death reduced to kisses

thirsty to die slowly,

you give to the bleeding grass

two fiery flaps.

The lip above the sky

and the earth the other lip.

Kiss that rolls in the shadow:

rolling kiss

from the first cemetery

until the last stars.

Astro that has your mouth

muted and closed

until a light blue touch

makes your eyelids vibrate.

Kiss that goes to a future

of girls and boys,

that will not leave deserts

neither the streets nor the fields.

How much buried mouth,

no mouth, we dig up!

Kiss on your mouth for them,

I toast in your mouth for so many

that fell on the wine

of the loving glasses.

Today are memories, memories,

distant and bitter kisses.

I sink my life into your mouth,

I hear rumors of spaces

and infinity seems

that has been overturned on me.

I have to kiss you again,

I have to return, I sink, I fall,

as the centuries descend

towards the deep ravines

like a feverish snow

of kisses and lovers.

Mouth you dug up

the clearest dawn

with your tongue. Three words,

three fires you have inherited:

life, death, love. There they remain

written on your lips.

• The mouth is not only used to convey love with kisses, but to raise our voice and express ourselves freely, just as this poem tells us.

7. 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.

• War never brings anything but pain and regret, because everything is so destroyed that there are really no winners.

8. Last song

Painted, not empty:

painted is my house

the color of the big ones

passions and misfortunes.

She will return from crying

where she was taken

with his deserted table

with his ruined bed.

Kisses will bloom

on the pillows.

And around the bodies

will raise the sheet

its intense creeper

nocturnal, scented.

Hate is muffled

behind the window.

It will be the soft claw.

Leave me hope.

• A poem that tells us about what lives in the houses. Memories, stories, joys and sorrows that remain even though no one lives there.

9. Everything is full of you

Although you are not, my eyes

of you, of everything, they are full.

You were not born just at dawn,

only at sunset I have not died.

The world full of you

and nurtured the cemetery

of me, for all things,

of the two, all over town.

In the streets I am leaving

something I'm collecting:

pieces of my life

lost from far away.

I am free in agony

and imprisoned I see myself

on the radiant thresholds,

radiant from births.

Everything is full of me:

of something that is yours and I remember

lost but found

sometime, sometime.

Time left behind

decidedly black,

indelibly red,

golden on your body.

Everything is full of you

pierced your hair:

of something that I have not achieved

I search between your bones.

• Even though someone has left, her presence is still imprinted on the memories we have of her, making it harder to say goodbye to her.

10. I wrote in the sand

I wrote in the sand

the three names of life:

life, death, love.

A gust of sea,

so many clear times gone,

came and erased them.

• This is how we should write our concerns on sand, to remind ourselves that they are not eternal.

11. Wheel that you will go very far

Wheel that you will go very far.

Ala you will go very high.

Tower of the day, boy.

Dawn of the bird.

Child: wing, wheel, tower.

Foot. Feather. Foam. Lightning.

To be like never to be.

You will never be in both.

You are tomorrow. Come

with everything in hand.

You are my whole being that returns

towards his clearer self.

The universe you are

what a hopeful guide.

Passion of the movement,

the land is your horse.

Fit her. Master it.

And it will sprout in his helmet

her skin of life and death,

of shadow and light, fooling around.

Ascend. Wheel. Flying,

creator of dawn and may.

Gallop Come. And fills

the bottom of my arms.

• A moving poem that Miguel dedicates to his son, to which he dedicated all his hopes for a better tomorrow and that he would have a more prosperous life than his.

12. Snake

In your narrow whistle is your crux,

and, rocket, you rise or fall;

from the sand, from the sun with more carats,

logical consequence of life.

For my happiness, to my mother, with your trick,

in humans you made fighting enter.

Give me, even if the gypsies are horrified,

most active poison, of apple trees.

• There is a legend about the symbolism written in the collection of "Perito en mounas". Like the snake described here, it refers to weapons of war.

13. For freedom

For freedom I bleed, I fight, I survive.

For freedom, my eyes and my hands,

like a carnal tree, generous and captive,

I give surgeons.

For freedom I feel more hearts

What sands in my chest: my veins foam,

and I enter the hospitals, and I enter the cottons

as in lilies.

For freedom I detach myself with bullets

of those who have rolled his statue in the mud.

And I knock off my feet, my arms,

of my house, of everything.

Because where empty basins dawn,

she will put two stones of future look

and she will make new arms and new legs grow

in the chopped meat.

Winged sap will sprout without autumn

relics of my body that I lose in each wound.

Because I am like the felled tree, what a shoot:

because I still have life.

• A cry of affirmation from a man who preferred to fight for freedom with his life than to remain in the stillness of the imposition of a regime.

14. The lightning that never stops

Will not cease this ray that inhabits me

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 rigid bonfires

towards my heart that moans and screams?

• An intricate poem that talks about the confusion and despair of feeling a love so deep that it takes your breath away.

15. Palmero and Palm Sunday (Octave II)

Light warps, and no, created by the waiter,

Cluster spuller stem:

not by force, and yes, from bronze to shawl,

yes by force, and no, of esparto and times we oppose.

For the brightest Sunday we went

with the light, raised with joy,

at the ready, under a cloister of mornings

until the eternal April of the blinds.

• Another of the mysterious poems of "Perito en mounas", which talks about the destiny that awaits us.

16. Day laborers

Day laborers who have paid in lead

sufferings, jobs and money.

Submissive and high loin bodies:

day laborers.

Spaniards that Spain have won

carving it between rains and between suns.

Rabadanes of hunger and the plow:

Spanish people.

This Spain that, never satisfied

to spoil the flower of the tares,

from one harvest to another:

this Spain.

Powerful tribute to the oaks,

homage of the bull and the colossus,

tribute of moors and mines

powerful.

This Spain that you have breastfed

with sweats and mountain thrusts,

covet those who have never cultivated

this Spain.

Will we let go cowardly

riches that our oars have forged?

Fields that have moistened our brow

will we leave?

Come forward, Spanish, a storm

of hammers and sickles: roars and sings.

Your future, your pride, your tool

go ahead.

The executioners, example of tyrants,

Hitler and Mussolini carve yokes.

Soak in a worm toilet

the executioners.

They, they bring us a chain

of prisons, miseries and abuses.

Who is Spain destroying and disorderly?

They! They!

Out, out, thieves of nations,

guardians of the banking dome,

broods of capital and its doubloons:

Out, out!

Thrown you will be like garbage

from everywhere and everywhere.

There will be no grave for you,

thrown.

The saliva will be your shroud,

your end the vengeful boot,

and it will only give you shade, peace and box

saliva.

Day laborers: Spain, hill to hill,

It is of lords, poor men and braceros.

Don't let the rich eat it,

day laborers!

• A poem that has a strong statement to the injustices of stealing the fruits of Spain from the hands of those who cultivated it. At the same time, it is a cry of encouragement to fight to get it back.

17. Onion nanas

Onion is frost

closed and poor:

frost of your days

and of my nights.

Hunger and onion:

black ice and frost

big and round.

In the cradle of hunger

my child was.

With onion blood

she was breastfeeding.

But your blood

frosted with sugar,

onion and hunger.

A dark woman,

resolved on the moon,

thread by thread is spilled

over the crib.

Laugh, child

that you swallow the moon

when necessary.

Lark of my house,

laugh a lot.

It is your laugh in the eyes

the light of the world.

Laugh so much

that in the soul when hearing you,

beat space.

Your laugh sets me free

it gives me wings.

Solitudes take me away,

jail takes me away.

Mouth that flies,

heart that on your lips

flashes.

Your laugh is the sword

more victorious.

Victor of flowers

and the larks.

Rival of the sun.

Future of my bones

and of my love.

The flapping flesh

sudden eyelid,

living like never before

colored.

How much goldfinch

soars, flutters,

from your body!

I woke up as a child.

Never wake up

Sad I carry my mouth.

Always laugh.

Always in the crib,

defending laughter

pen by pen.

To be so high-flying

so widespread,

that your meat looks like

looming sky.

If I could

go back to the origin

of your career!

In the eighth month you laugh

with five orange blossoms.

With five tiny

ferocities.

With five teeth

like five jasmine

teenagers.

Kisses border

will be tomorrow,

when in the teeth

feel a weapon.

Feel a fire

run down teeth

looking for the center.

Fly child in the double

chest moon.

He, sad of onion.

You satisfied.

Do not fall apart.

Do not know what happens

nor what happens.

• It is said that this poem reflects the lacking situation that his son and his mother went through, in the midst of poverty and uncertainty.

18. Olive trees

Andalusians of Jaén,

haughty olive trees,

tell me in my soul, who,

who raised the olive trees?

He didn't pick them up out of nowhere,

neither the money, nor the lord,

but the quiet land,

work and sweat.

United to pure water

and the planets united,

the three gave the beauty

of the twisted trunks.

Get up, gray olive tree,

they said at the foot of the wind.

And the olive tree raised a hand

powerful foundation.

Andalusians of Jaén,

haughty olive trees, tell me in my soul who

who suckled the olive trees?

Your blood, your life,

not the exploiter

that was enriched in the wound

generous of sweat.

Not that of the landlord

who buried you in poverty,

that trampled your forehead,

that reduced your head.

Trees that your desire

consecrated to the center of the day

they were the beginning of a bread

that only the other ate.

How many centuries of olives,

hands and feet imprisoned,

sun to sun and moon to moon,

weigh on your bones!

Andalusians of Jaén,

haughty olive trees,

my soul asks: whose,

whose olive trees are they?

Jaén, get up brave

on your moonstones,

don't be a slave

with all your olive groves.

Inside the clarity

of the oil and its aromas,

indicate your freedom

the freedom of your hills.

• Another strong poem that talks about raising the struggle of the day laborers of Jaén, in an attempt to make them aware of their power and the need to defend their work on the land.

19. Orange blossom

Border of the pure, flowery and cold.

Your six-edged whiteness, complement,

in the main world, of your breath,

in a world sums up a noon.

Astrologer the branches too much,

green was never exempt.

Arctic flower to the south: it is necessary

your slip to the good course of the canary.

• Another intriguing account of "Perito de lunas", which has been speculated speaks of Concepción de Albornoz.

20. Old age in the villages

Old age in the villages.

The heart without an owner.

Love without an object.

The grass, the dust, the raven.

And the youth?

In the coffin.

The tree, alone and dry.

The woman, like a log

of widowhood on the bed.

Hatred, without remedy.

And the youth?

In the coffin.

• Very few young people tend to stay in their villages, as their ambitious horizons usually lead them to the big cities.

21. The deserted encompasses (By the fifth of January)

By the fifth of January,

every January he put

my goat shoes

to the cold window.

And found the days

that break down the doors,

my empty sandals,

my deserted sandals.

I never had shoes

no suits, no words:

I always had streams

always sorrows and goats.

Poverty clothed me,

the river licked my body

and from toe to head

grass I was dew.

By the fifth of January,

for the six, I wanted

let it be the whole world

a toy store.

And as the dawn goes on

stirring the orchards,

my covers with nothing,

my deserted sandals.

No king crowned

he had a foot, he wanted

to see the footwear

from my poor window.

All throne people,

all people with boots

laughed fiercely

of my broken sandals.

Crying rage, until

cover my skin with salt,

for a world of pasta

and some honey men.

By the fifth of January

from my sheepfold

my goat shoes

the frost came out.

And towards six, my glances

they found at their doors

my frozen sandals,

my deserted sandals.

• This poem allows us to glimpse, through metaphors, the not so fortunate past of Miguel de Unamuno. A tough childhood full of ugliness and heavy work.

22. What is your life, my soul?

What is your life, my soul? What is your payment?

Rain on the lake!

What is your life, my soul, your habit?

Wind at the top!

How is your life, my soul, renewed?

Shadow in the cave!

Rain on the lake!

Wind at the top!

Shadow in the cave!

Tears is the rain from heaven,

and the wind is sobbing without departure,

regret, the shadow without any consolation,

and rain and wind and shadow make life.

• The bewilderment after knowing what the true life of that loved one is like, so different from what we imagine, being a painful blow from reality.

23. Nuptial death

The bed, that grass of yesterday and tomorrow:

this canvas of now on wood still green,

floats like the earth, joins the kiss

where desire finds eyes and loses them.

Pass through eyes like a desert;

as for two cities that not a love contains.

Look that goes and returns without having discovered

the heart to no one, let everyone sand it.

My eyes found yours in a corner.

They found themselves speechless between the two glances.

We feel a lullaby dovecote touring us,

and a group of snatched wing outbursts.

The more they looked at each other the more they were: the deeper

they were seen, further away, more in one fused.

The heart became, and the world, rounder.

The homeland of the nests crossed the bed.

So the growing longing, the distance

that goes from bone to bone traveled and united,

as you breathe in the imperious fragrance completely;

we project bodies beyond life.

We expire completely. What an absolute wonder!

How total was the happiness of looking at each other embraced,

eyes rolled up for a moment,

and at the moment down with folded eyes!

But we will not die. It was so warmly

consummate life like the sun, his gaze.

It is not possible to lose ourselves. We are full seed.

And death has been, with both, fertilized.

• A poem that mixes the themes of love, life and death. If we are lucky enough to love, in our life there will be no fear of death.

24. Flight

Only those who love flies. But who loves so much

make it like the slightest and most fugitive bird?

Sinking this reigning hatred all that

I would like to go straight back alive.

To love... But who does he love? Fly... But who flies?

I will conquer the blue greedy for plumage,

but love, always down, is disconsolate

of not finding the wings that gives a certain courage.

A fiery being, clear of desires, winged,

he wanted to ascend, to have freedom as a nest.

He wants to forget that the men he away encadenated.

Where feathers were missing he put courage and forgetfulness.

He went so high at times that it glowed

above the skin the sky, under the skin the bird.

Be that you got confused with a lark one day,

you collapsed others like grave hail.

You already know that the lives of others are slabs

with which to wall you up: prisons with which to swallow yours.

Pass, life, between bodies, between beautiful bars.

Through the bars, free blood flow.

Sad happy instrument of dress: pressing

Tube to crave and breathe the fire.

Sword devoured by constant use.

Body in whose closed horizon I unfold.

You will not fly. You can't fly, body you roam

through these galleries where the air is my knot.

As much as you debate about ascending, you are shipwrecked.

You will not cry out. The field remains deserted and mute.

His arms don't flap. Are they perhaps a queue

that the heart would like to launch into the sky.

The blood is sad to fight alone.

His eyes turn sad from bad knowledge.

Every city, asleep, wakes up crazy, exhales

a jail silence, a dream that burns and rains

like a hoarse elite from not being able to be a wing.

The man lies. The sky rises. The air moves.

• Many people tend to confuse relationships with loss of self-freedom, which is incorrect. If a person truly loves, he will always want to see his partner reach the top.

25. May 1, 1937

I don't know what buried artillery

shoot carnations from below,

nor what cavalry

thunders across and makes laurels smell.

Stallions steeds,

excited bulls,

like a cast of bronze and iron,

arise after a mane from all sides,

after a rendered pale cowbell.

May the animals get angry:

the war rages more,

and behind the weapons the plows

they roar, the flowers boil, the sun turns.

Even the secular corpse raves.

May jobs:

agriculture climbs its zenith.

The sickle appears like lightning

endless in a dark hand.

Despite the raging war,

the peaks do not gag his songs,

and the rosebush gives its exciting smell

because the rosebush is not afraid of canyons.

May is today more angry and powerful:

the spilled blood feeds him,

the youth that turned into a torrent

its execution of interlaced fire.

I wish Spain an executive May,

clothed in the eternal fullness of the age.

The first tree is his open olive tree

and his blood will not be his last.

The Spain that is not plowed today will be plowed entirely.

• This poem tells us about the heavy military life of Miguel, in the middle of a fierce battle in Spain that left in its wake the loss of great characters in literature.