Ernestina de Champourcin
She was one of the most prominent poets of the Generation of '27. She enjoyed great prestige as a literary critic and poet in the years leading up to the war. In fact, she is one of the two women featured in Gerardo Diego's anthology.
His poetic work was constantly evolving. In his early period, his poetry was romantic and straddled the line between pure poetry and the avant-garde. During his exile in Mexico, his poetry took on a more mature tone—at times mystical and transcendent—but always with intense emotional depth.
His work brings together images of modernity, love, the desire for freedom, and a sensibility that transcends intellectual detachment to achieve great lyrical intensity.
WAIT
Love! You haven’t even arrived yet, and already you’re wrapping yourself around me
clinging to my body like a wounded rosebush.
Set me straight! May my dark root
absorb the redeeming sap until it swells.
Love, sleepless silence, a wait interwoven
with pale ghosts playing at being kisses,
unsupported tenderness, a hidden heartbeat
in the innermost fold of the most hidden dream.
Love, mist, and star, secret paradise
that is won and lost with the same caress:
surrender your nameless porticos to my wandering steps.
My untouched nakedness will be clothed in you!
If you deny me your ecstasy, do not deny me your wound.
I give the pleasure that enervates through the dart that burns.
Initiate me into the glory of your deepest pain
and I will sing, as I die, my ineffable song.
Perhaps you will never arrive. My spirit, watching over
waits tirelessly for your mysterious sign.
In what night breeze do your lips already bloom,
at what zenith of suns will your anointing permeate me?
(Useless Song, 1936)