On June 1, 1874, the writer Macedonio Fernández was born in Buenos Aires. Jorge Luis Borges once claimed that no one person had so impressed him: both writers used to meet to spend hours talking about literature and other topics. We present some poems by Fernández to commemorate this anniversary of his birth.
I believed
Not everything reaches love, because I can not
break the segment with which Death touches.
But little death can
if in the heart of Love your fear dies.
But little Death can, because it cannot
enter your fear in chest where Love.
That Death rules Life; Love to Death.
We suggest you read the travel chronicle of The City of Light
There is a dying
Don’t take me to shadows of death
Where my life will be shaded,
Where you only live having been.
I don’t want to live on the memory.
Give me other days like these in life.
Oh not so soon do
Of me an absent
And the absent one from me.
Don’t take my Today!
I would like to still be in me.
There is a dying if of eyes
He turns his gaze of love
And there is only the look of living.
It is the gazing of the shadows of Death.
It is not Death the libadora of cheeks,
This is Death. Forgetfulness in looking eyes.
We suggest you read Los mesos de la Fundación Casa de Poesía Silva
When our pain pretends to be alien
Voice of a pain rose from the road and visited the night,
Trance moaning through a mouth spoke.
It was the shadows everywhere. My hands
Apartments for my steps
Wounded from impatience and stumbling
Looking for that request of a hurt person.
Scream that overshadowed the shadow
The pulse of my life cooled again.
And stumbling on the soul and the step
Not from my pain, from someone else’s pain,
I thought I was grieving, when I found myself bleeding
My heart, crying out for me,
What exiled from my chest would there be?
Because only the memory his heartbeat gave
And only in the memory my pain was
And so from the road he called me
And as soon as he felt me close, he welcomed me
To my triumphant chest as an angry owner,
And instantly that beat struck me;
The beating of her cry from the pain of the memory.
And today I don’t want to banish him again.
That that pain is the pain that I want.
It’s her,
And I am just that pain, I am her,
I am her absence, I am what is only of her;
My heart better than me commands it.
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