15 great poems by Juana de Ibarbourou

Juana de Ibarbourou, also known as Juana de América (1892-1979), was considered one of the greatest, most charming and powerful voices of Uruguayan poetry. She was also recognized as one of the most important exponents of the Latin American lyric of the twentieth century, captivating people with her love-laden poems, the reality of motherhood, and ethereal and physical beauty.

• We recommend you read: "25 great poems by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer"

Great poems by Juana de Ibarbourou

Where poems abounded with melancholic and painful lyrics, Juana de América filled the spaces with optimism and freshness, for which she attracted the attention of all youth.

1. Let's love each other

Under the pink wings of this flowering laurel,

let's love each other The old and eternal lamp

of the moon has lit its millennial glow

and this corner of grass has the warmth of a nest.

Let's love each other. Perhaps there is a hidden faun

next to the trunk of the sweet hospitable laurel

and cry to find myself without love, lonely,

looking at our idyll in front of the sleeping meadow.

Let's love each other. The clear, aromatic and mystical night

I don't know what gentle cabalistic sweetness it has.

We are big and alone on the beam of the fields

and the fireflies in our hair love each other,

with brief shudders like flashes

of vague emeralds and strange chrysolampos.

• This poem tells us about not being afraid to express our feelings towards a person in order to love them without limits. Because really, what prevents it?

2. Under the rain

How the water runs down my back!

How wet my skirt,

and puts its freshness of snow on my cheeks!

It rains, it rains, it rains

and I go, path ahead,

with a light soul and a radiant face,

without feeling, without dreaming,

full of the voluptuousness of not thinking.

A bird bathes

in a cloudy pool. My presence misses you,

he stops... he looks at me... we feel like friends ...

We both love lots of skies, fields, and wheat!

Then is the amazement

of a peasant who passes with his hoe on his shoulder

and the rain covers me with all the fragrances

of the October hedges.

And it is, on my body by the soaked water

like a wonderful and wonderful headdress

of crystalline drops, of leafless flowers

that the astonished plants overturn in my path.

And I feel, in emptiness

of the brain without sleep, the voluptuousness

of infinite pleasure, sweet and unknown,

of a minute of oblivion.

It rains, it rains, it rains

and I have in soul and flesh, like a freshness of snow.

• There is no better way to describe the enjoyment of being in nature in a relaxed and raw way than this poem.

3. Purple hour

What blue do I have?

In what gold and in what rose do I stop,

what happiness is honey between my mouth

or what river sings in front of my chest?

It is the hour of the gall, the purple hour

in which the past, like a sour fruit,

just give me your lackluster satin

and a confused sense of fear.

The land of rest is approaching me

end, under the erect trees,

the cypresses those that I have sung

and I see now on guard of the dead.

I loved, oh God, I loved men and beasts

and I only have the loyalty of the dog

who still watches my insomnia by my side

with her eyes so sweet and so good.

• Life is not rosy and neither is love or friendship. We are always vulnerable to disappointment or betrayal and we must be as prepared as possible for it.

4. Rebel

Charon: I'll be a scandal in your boat

While the other shadows pray, moan or cry,

And under his eyes of sinister patriarch

The shy and sad, in low accent, pray,

I will go like a lark singing by the river

And I will take my wild perfume to your boat

And I will radiate in the ripples of the gloomy stream

Like a blue lantern that shines on the journey.

No matter how much you don't want, no matter how sinister winks

Let your two eyes make me, in the masters terror,

Charon, I in your boat will be like a scandal.

And exhausted with shade, courage and cold,

When you want to leave me by the river bank

Your arms will lower me like a vandal's conquest.

• Here we can see a different kind of struggle, that of loving someone who restrains himself from loving. For different reasons, there are people who are afraid to give up their feelings and it is fair by showing them that the risk is worth it, that we can make them change.

5. Wild root

I have been nailed in the eyes

the vision of that wheat cart

that crossed creaky and heavy

sowing the straight path with ears of corn.

Don't pretend now that he laughs!

You do not know in what deep memories

I am abstracted!

From the bottom of my soul it rises

a taste of pitanga to the lips.

My skin still has brown

I do not know what fragrances of soggy wheat.

Oh, I would like to take you with me

to sleep one night in the field

and in your arms spend until the day

under the crazy roof of a tree!

I'm the same wild girl

that years ago you brought by your side.

• We must never forget our origin, the place where we come from, or the people who helped us to get ahead, because later they may need a helping hand.

6. The FIG tree

Because it's rough and ugly

because all its branches are gray,

I have mercy on the fig tree.

In my villa there are a hundred beautiful trees:

round plums,

straight lemon trees

and orange trees with shiny buds.

In the springs,

all of them are covered with flowers

around the fig tree.

And the poor thing seems so sad

with its twisted segments than ever

in tight cocoons they dress ...

So,

every time I pass by her,

I say, trying

make my accent sweet and cheerful:

-Is the fig tree the most beautiful

of the trees in the orchard.

If she listens

if she understands the language I speak,

What a deep sweetness will make a nest

in your sensitive tree soul!

and maybe at night,

when the wind fans her glass,

drunk with joy, she tells him:

-Today they called me beautiful.

• There is more than physical beauty. The personality and the very essence of a person is found inside him. Therefore we must give him the opportunity to show himself.

7. Like a desperate flower

I want it with the blood, with the bone,

with the eye that looks and the breath,

with the forehead that inclines the thought,

with this warm and imprisoned heart,

and fatally obsessed with sleep

of this love that I feel,

from the brief laugh to the lament,

from the witch wound to her kiss.

My life is from your tributary life,

Whether it seems tumultuous to you, or lonely,

like a single desperate flower.

It depends on him like the hard log

the orchid, or like the ivy on the wall,

that only in him breathes raised.

• A raw, needy and passionate love that walks between uncertainty and the security of remaining. It is that love that causes confusion but that we are reluctant to lose.

8. Love

Love is fragrant like a bouquet of roses.

Loving, all springs are owned.

Eros brings the fragrant flowers in his quiver

of all the shadows and all the meadows.

When he comes to my bed he brings the scent of estuaries,

of wild corollas and juicy clovers.

Burning effluvia from the nests of goldfinches,

hidden in the branches of the lush ceiba trees!

All my young flesh is impregnated with that essence!

Perfume of flowery and wild springs

remains on my brown skin of burning transparency

perfumes of broom, lilies and wisteria.

Love reaches my bed crossing long ages

and anoint my skin with fresh peasant essences.

• It is common to compare love with spring, since it is about flourishing by discovering new feelings and sensations that keep us on the lookout and make us see the world in a different way.

9. Melancholia

The subtle spinner weaves her dark lace

with strange anxiety, with loving patience.

What a wonder if it were made of pure linen

and out, instead of black the spider, pink!

In a dark and fragrant corner of the orchard

the hairy spinner weaves her light cloth.

In her the diamonds of her will suspend the dew

and the moon, the dawn, the sun, the snow will love her.

Spider friend: thread like you my golden veil

and in the middle of silence I make my jewels.

She, then, unites us with the anguish of an identical eagerness.

But the moon and the dew pay for your sleeplessness.

God knows, spider friend, what I'll find for mine!

God knows, spider friend, what a prize they will give me!

• Although Juana de América was best known for her lively poems, she is also dedicated to talking about the sadness that inevitably tarnishes some section of our lives.

10. Thirst

Your kiss was on my lips

of a refreshing sweetness.

Feeling of living water and blackberries

gave me your loving mouth.

Tired I lay down on the pastures

with your arm outstretched, for support.

And your kiss fell between my lips,

like a ripe fruit of the forest

or a pebble wash from the stream.

I am thirsty again, my beloved.

Give me your fresh kiss just like one

pebbles from the river.

• The hunger that lasts for one more kiss from the loved one, for another hug, for another caress that makes us wish that the time we spend with that person becomes eternal.

11. The time

Take me now that it's still early

and that I have new dahlias in my hand.

Take me now that it's still bleak

this taciturn hair of mine.

Now that I have the smelly meat

and clean eyes and rosy skin.

Now that my light plant is wearing

the lively sandal of spring.

Now that laughter rings on my lips

like a bell shaken quickly.

After... ah, I know

that I will have none of that later!

That then your wish will be useless,

as an offering placed on a mausoleum.

Take me now that it's still early

and that my hand is rich with spikenard!

Today, not later. Before Night Falls

and the fresh corolla becomes withered.

Today, and not tomorrow. Oh lover! you do not see

that the creeper will grow cypress?

• This poem reminds us that life is short and we must make the most of it, without having so many unnecessary waits. Especially when it comes to loving.

12. Like spring

Like a black wing I tended my hair

on your knees.

Closing your eyes your smell you inhaled,

telling me then:

-Do you sleep on moss-covered stones?

Do you tie your braids with willow branches?

Is your pillow made of clover? Do you have them so black

because perhaps you squeezed a juice in it

dark and thick of wild blackberries?

What a fresh and strange fragrance surrounds you!

You smell like streams, land and jungles.

What perfume do you use? And laughing I told you:

-None, none!

I love you and I am young, I smell spring.

This smell that you feel is of firm flesh,

with clear cheeks and new blood.

I love you and I'm young, that's why I have

the same fragrances of spring!

• Again Juana shows us a poem that compares love with spring. With youth, joy, passion and curiosity that converge from this new experience.

13. Reconquest

I don't know where the longing came from

To sing again as in time

in which I had the sky in my fist

And with a blue pearl the thought.

From a mourning cloud, the spark,

Sudden fish, split the warm night

And in me the chrysalis opened again

Of the winged verse and its burnished star.

Now it is already the sparkling wind

That lifts up to God the mighty offering

Of his burnished diamond spear.

Unity of light on the rose.

And again the amazing conquest

Of the eternal victorious poetry.

• In these verses we are shown the power that is felt when you take up something that was left behind, to do something that you always wanted to do and conquer it.

14. Spite

Ah, I'm tired! I've laughed so hard

so much so that tears have come to my eyes;

so much so that this grimace that my mouth contracts

it's a strange trace of my crazy laugh.

So much so that this intense paleness that I have

(as in portraits of old ancestry),

it is because of the fatigue of the crazy laughter

that in all my nerves his stupor slides.

Ah, I'm tired! Let me sleep

Well, like anguish, joy makes you sick.

What a rare occurrence to say that I am sad!

When did you see me happier than now?

Lie! I have neither doubts nor jealousy

no restlessness, no anguish, no pain, no longings.

If the moisture of tears shines in my eyes,

it's from the effort of laughing so much ...

• Sometimes we refuse to experience pain out of fear of being vulnerable. But just like the joys, the sorrows must also manifest themselves.

15. The strong bond

I grew up

for you.

Talame. My acacia

implore your hands for his coup de grace.

Flori

for you.

Cut me off. My lily

at birth he doubted he was a flower or a candle.

I flowed

for you.

Drink me The glass

I envy the clearness of my spring.

Di wings

for you.

Haunt me. Phalaena,

I surrounded your flame with full impatience.

For you I will suffer.

Blessed be the damage that your love gives me!

Blessed be the ax, blessed the net,

and praise be scissors and thirst!

Blood from the side

I will well, my beloved.

What most beautiful brooch, what most pleasant jewel,

that for you a scarlet sore?

Instead of beads for my hair

seven long thorns I will sink between them.

And instead of tendrils I will put in my ears,

like two rubies, two red embers.

You will see me laugh

watching me suffer.

And you will cry.

And then... more mine than you will ever be!

• An intriguing dance between wounds and love between two people. There are times where just by hurting someone, we know how much they are worth to us.