The 10 best poems by Julio Cortázar

A selection of poems with the best verses of this Argentine writer.

If we talk about Julio Cortázar, probably the majority of people who know his work will identify his name with that of one of the greatest exponents of Hispanic literature of the last century. of the last century.

This Argentine writer, although of Belgian origin (although he was born in Belgium, shortly after his birth his family fled the First World War first to Switzerland, then to Barcelona and finally to Argentina, where he grew up), who was also a translator and an important intellectual of his time, will probably be best known for his short stories and for one of his most important novels, Rayuela.

Also for his concern for the Argentine military regime that existed at the time, which can be seen in some of his works. But the truth is that although the best known of him is his literary work, the truth is that since his adolescence this author felt a great interest in poetry, having written several works of great beauty that reflect his concerns and his feelings. That is why throughout this article we are going to expose several of Julio Cortázar's best poems..

10 poems by Julio Cortázar

Here we leave you with a brief sample of Julio Cortázar's poems, which deal with areas as different as love, friendship, melancholy or disappointment.

1. Happy New Year

Look, I don't ask for much, just your hand, to hold it like a little toad that sleeps so contentedly. I need that door you used to give me to enter your world, that little piece of green sugar, that little piece of round joyful sugar, won't you lend me your hand on this New Year's Eve night of hooting owls? You can not, for technical reasons.

So I hold it up in the air, warping each finger, the silky peach of the palm and the back, that country of blue trees. Thus I take it and hold it, as if so much of the world depended on it, the succession of the four seasons, the crowing of the roosters, the love of men.

This poem speaks to us of the longing for those we love and cherish at special moments, such as the arrival of a new year, and with whom we cannot be with due to the distance that separates us. It speaks to us of memory and of having the other person present, fresh in your memory.fresh in your memory.

2. After the holidays

And when everyone was leaving and we were both left between empty glasses and dirty ashtrays, how beautiful it was to know that you were there like a haven, alone with me at the edge of the night, and that you lasted, you were more than time, you were the one who did not leave because the same pillow and the same warmth was going to call us again to wake up to the new day, together, laughing, disheveled.

Poetry that briefly expresses the sensations of being alone with the loved one, the person in whom we trust.The person you trust and admire and with whom you wish to spend your days.

3. Sidewalks of Buenos Aires

When we were kids we called it: "la vedera". And she liked that we loved her, On her long-suffering lathe we drew So many little stripes.

Later, already more compadres, heel to toe We turned the apple with the bar, Whistling loud so that the blonde From the storehouse, with her pretty braids To the window.

One day it was my turn to go very far away But I didn't forget about the "vederas". But I did not forget the "vederas". Here or there, I feel them in the "tamangos". Like the faithful caress of my land. How much I will wander around "ái " until I can see them again...!

This poem is dedicated to the land that the author considered his own, Argentina, where he spent most of his childhood and which he longed for when he left the country in the face of the rise of the Peronist Argentine military dictatorship between 1976 and 1983.

4. Summary of autumn

In the dome of the afternoon each bird is a point of memory. Sometimes it is astonishing that the fervor of time returns, without body it returns, without reason it returns; that beauty, so brief in its violent love, keeps an echo for us in the descent of the night.

And so, what else but to stay with arms down, Heart piled up and that taste of dust that was rose or road. The flight exceeds the wing. Without humility, knowing that what remains was won in the shade by the work of silence; that the branch in the hand, that the dark tear are inheritance, the man with his history, the lamp that illuminates.

On this occasion the author makes a brief description of the sensations that the arrival of autumn and the passing of time produce in him, as well as the knowledge that everything will be reborn in spring.

5. The slow loveless machine

The slow machine of lovelessness, the gears of reflux, the bodies that abandon the pillows, the sheets, the kisses, and stand before the mirror questioning each other, no longer looking at each other, no longer naked for each other, no longer I love you, my love.

A quite clear poetry that expresses how little by little the magic and illusion in a couple's relationship has been lost, to the point that love has disappeared..

6. After such pleasures

Tonight, looking for your mouth in another mouth almost believing it, because that's how blind is this river that pulls me as a woman and submerges me between its eyelids, how sad it is to finally swim towards the shore of drowsiness knowing that drowsiness is that ignoble slave that accepts false coins, circulates them smiling.

Forgotten purity, how I would like to rescue that pain of Buenos Aires, that waiting without pauses or hope. Alone in my open house on the harbor again to begin to love you, again to meet you in the morning coffee without so much unrenounceable thing had happened. And not having to accommodate me from this oblivion that goes up for nothing, to erase from the blackboard your little dolls and leave me only a window without stars.

This poem speaks to us of the feeling of emptiness and hopelessnessIt is about using passions and vices as an escape, as well as the longing for better times after the end of a full and initially happy relationship.

7. Friends

In the tobacco, in the coffee, in the wine, at the edge of the night they rise like those voices that sing in the distance without knowing what, along the way.

Lightly brothers of destiny, dark, pale shadows, they scare the flies from my habits, they keep me afloat among so many whirlpools.

The dead speak more but in my ear, and the living are warm hand and roof, sum of what is won and what is lost.

Thus one day in the boat of the shadow, from so much absence my chest will shelter this ancient tenderness that names them.

One of Julio Cortázar's poems dedicated to friendship, to the memory of those friends who mattered to us and with whom we shared part of our life.

8. Nocturne

Tonight my hands are black, my heart is sweaty as after fighting to oblivion with the centipedes of smoke.

Everything has been left there, the bottles, the boat, I don't know if they loved me and if they expected to see me.

In the diary lying on the bed it says diplomatic encounters, an exploratory bloodletting, beat him merrily in four sets.

A towering forest surrounds this house in the center of town, I know, I feel a blind man is dying nearby.

My wife climbs up and down a small ladder like a ship's captain wary of the stars.

There is a cup of milk, papers, eleven o'clock at night. Outside it seems as if crowds of horses are approaching the window behind me. to the window behind me.

Sad poem that expresses the suffering and longing for what was left behind, probably derived from the feelings the author had when he left Argentina.

9. Recurring ceremony

The totemic animal with its claws of light, the eyes that gather the darkness under the bed, the mysterious rhythm of your breathing, the shadow that your sweat draws in the smell, the day already imminent.

Then I straighten up, still churned by the waters of sleep, I return from a half-blind continent where you were also there but you were another, and when I consult you with my mouth and fingers, I travel the horizon of your flanks (sweetly you get angry, you want to continue sleeping, you call me brute and fool, you debate laughing, you do not let yourself be taken but it is already late, a fire of fur and jet, the figures of sleep) the totemic animal at the foot of the bonfire with its nails of light and its wings of musk.

And then we wake up and it is Sunday and February.

This poem expresses the embrace and subsequent relationship under the sheets of a sleepy couple, after of a sleepy couple, after waking up..

10. I touch your mouth

I touch your mouth, with one finger I touch the edge of your mouth, I draw it as if it came out of my hand, as if for the first time your mouth were half-open, and it is enough for me to close my eyes to undo everything and start again, I give birth each time to the mouth that I desire, the mouth that my hand chooses and draws on your face, a mouth chosen among all, with sovereign freedom chosen by me to draw it with my hand on your face, and that by a chance that I do not seek to understand coincides exactly with your mouth that smiles below the one that my hand draws on your face.

You look at me, closely you look at me, closer and closer and then we play cyclops, we look at each other closer and closer and our eyes get bigger, get closer to each other, overlap and cyclopses look at each other, breathing confused, mouths meet and fight tepidly, biting each other with their lips, barely resting their tongues on their teeth, playing in their enclosures where a heavy air comes and goes with an old perfume and a silence.

Then my hands seek to sink into your hair, slowly caress the depth of your hair as we kiss as if our mouths were full of flowers or fish, of living movements, of dark fragrance. And if we bite each other the pain is sweet, and if we drown in a brief and terrible simultaneous absorption of breath, that instant death is beautiful. And there is only one saliva and one taste of ripe fruit, and I feel you trembling against me like a moon in the water.

This beautiful love poem tells us about the sensations produced by a situation of intimacy and love and the sensations awakened by looking at each other and kissing with the loved one.