Federico Barreto Poems

 

Federico Barreto Poems

 

Source: Biographical data by Carlos Alfonso Rodríguez Vilca

San Martin de Porres University

 

On February 8, 1862, the poet and journalist Federico Barreto, one of the country's brilliant romantic authors, was born in Tacna. He was only 17 years old when Chile attacked Peru, for which his songs and poems were filled with deep patriotism. Federico Barreto was a founding member of the weekly newspaper El Progresista (1886) and the Círculo Vigil (1888), with his brother José María Barreto, with whom he joined the group called "La Bohemia Tacneña", in whose literary magazine called Letras the following collaborated: Rubén Darío, Clemente Palma, José Enrique Rodó, and José Santos Chocano, among other authors.

 

 

The Barreto brothers also directed the newspaper La Voz del Sur, a publication that made the Chilean invaders uncomfortable because it spread regional awareness through their writings. For many years, the Barretos remained firm and unyielding in the defence of national sovereignty through the pages of their newspaper. Poetry and journalism were their deepest passions and the tools with which they defended their ideas.

Poems of Federico Barreto

 

1.     THE KISS

With naive delight

and brimming with joy,

you ask me my brunette

tell you... What is a kiss?

 

A kiss is the soft echo of a song,

that more than singing is a sacrosanct hymn

that the bird cannot imitate.

 

A kiss is the sweet language

With which two hearts speak,

Who mix their impressions?

like the flowers their aroma.

 

A kiss is...do not be crazy...

Why do you ask me that?

Put your mouth to my mouth

and you will know what a kiss is!

2.    THE EMPTY NEST

In a better time, here I lived

The guardian angel of my loves.

To prayer, in these corridors,

she, my verses, repeat used to.

 

This was her garden. Here she came

at dawn, to pick flowers.

Under this lemon tree, today without greenery,

we say goodbye forever, one day!

 

The years have passed. to her orchard,

Nobody comes at dawn anymore...

Since she left, it has been deserted!

 

A cemetery is her garden now,

And here, in the shadows, when the day has died,

my soul cries for her absence...

3.    ENIGMA

You are an enigma that has no key

you stand out from all women,

no one can know if you hate or love,

on your chest you have to write: Who knows!

 

You have something of a beast and something of a bird,

one day you kiss and another day you hurt

What do you ambition? What are you waiting for? What do you prefer?

 

So much mystery in reason does not fit!

I would like to forget you and I do not forget you;

I long to hate you,

and I have never loved anyone like you.

 

I enjoy looking at you and I would not want to see you

You are a woman my forbidden fruit!

You give me life and death at the same time!

 

4.    LAST REQUEST

Hate me for mercy, I ask you...

Hate me without measure or mercy!

Hate is better than indifference.

Resentment hurts less than oblivion.

 

I will remain, if you hate me, convinced,

that once again your existence was mine.

Hate is better than indifference.

No one hates without wanting to!

 

5.    INTERNAL IDILIO

days ago, many days

that I look for you and I can't find you, that I call you and you don't answer,

that I invoke you and you do not appear, that you hide, that you hide.

That they have gone that my best joys have died.

 

For not seeing me you no longer want to look out the window,

where you always appeared at night like a star;

where yesterday talking alone about the present and tomorrow.

I will be yours! ---You were telling me.

I will be yours! ---You swore to me with your hands in mine.

 

What does your deviation come from? What motivates your anger?

Did I offend you unintentionally? Did I wrong you without thinking about it?

If I did so, for my damage, your duty is to declare it,

My duty, fall on my knees!

 

Our history is a history of infinite misadventures;

there is in her, my love

for every hour of joy

many years of sadness, many centuries of bitterness.

 

Our story is a story

that delights and martyrs my memory. . .

One day I was walking around the world, at random,

Walking, walking like a wandering reprobate. . .

He was lost like Dante crossing the dark jungle.

 

On me I carried the weight of a great and deep pain

He was dragging me . . .! I could not with my own sorrow!

Suddenly one morning you crossed my path

and when I saw you I stopped with discoloured face. . .

How beautiful! I thought you were a pilgrim archangel

who came to lead me to the Promised Land?

and at your feet I fell on my knees with a moved soul

and at your feet I fell on my knees and blessed my destiny.

 

Many hours, many days, many years, many years

savouring disappointments,

Enduring disappointments,

I followed you everywhere begging for your love.

in those long days

Of hopes and agonies

i cried so much . . i cried so much

that have been dry ever since, the streams of my tears.

 

My perseverance won in the end, it was stronger than your detour,

One night you listened to me, I told you all my story

and by telling you that it was yours, only yours my will

that your love was my life, that your love was my glory,

that for you I would be able

of the greatest deeds, of the strangest things

I happily warned

that a tear looked

like a drop of dew on the flower of your eyelashes. . .

 

Then you spoke and told me many things, many things,

Delicate, fugitive, cadenced,

and your phrases fluttered vaporous

from your mouth that resembles the newborn carnation

even my soul that is your nest,

like flocks of invisible, impalpable butterflies.

Suddenly, in the silence of the sovereign night

Resounded like a wicked cry,

the clamor of a bell. . .

The sad hour! –you murmured- The sad hour! See you tomorrow

Our souls immediately joined in a kiss,

you escaped from my arms and closed the window. . .

 

I haven't seen you since then...! It would be said that you have died;

your shutter is closed, your balcony is deserted. . .

In what mysterious cell, unknown to me,

without knowing why you wanted

bury you in full life?

It would be said that you have died, that you have gone, that you have gone

to live in the unfathomable darkness of oblivion. . .

 

I call you night and day

I call you and I wanted

see you next to me, like yesterday I used to see you;

embrace you in my arms and exclaim with joy

Mine! Mine! Only mine!

Mine now, mine always, until the end, until death.

But not! All delight eventually becomes weariness;

all happiness degenerates into tiredness and disappointments

and I yearn;

for your sake and for mine,

May our loves not have this end in the world!

 

In your duel, which is my duel,

I have a consolation for you

i know the way

to make this love, be eternal, never die. . .

A huge sacrifice unfortunately is necessary.

Don't worry! Don't faint! Don't be downcast.

You do not know? In the life

everyone suffers, everyone cries, everyone has their ordeal.

 

It is forced to separate us. . . pale!

Calm your anguish girl.

The liquor of fortune

loses all its sweetness

if you drink to feces!

It is forced to separate us. . . Have you thought the same?

Is that why you hide? Is that why you hide?

Is that why you no longer respond to my cries of pain?

If you think so, I forgive you my pain and your selfishness. . .

How sad my love!

Our happiness was in the world, will-o'-the-wisp, vain shadow;

like the poet's rose, did not even live a day,

it hardly lasted, the duration of the brilliance of a morning.

 

Bye! Let's go around the world, sign the foot, the forehead followed

everyone on his way,

each one to his destiny,

without the idea of ​​meeting again in this life.

In what arms, my angel, will luck finally cast you?

Will love make you feel new spells one day?

Will anyone in the world love you like I came to love you?

Who will your lips be for? Who will your kisses be for?

Bye! Nothing in return for my enormous love I ask you

I just want you to be true

than ever! do you hear it? Never! Are you alive or are you dead

I will throw you out of my memory, the sepulcher of oblivion. . .

 

I don't blame you for my sorrows.

It is not you who has cut short my fortune. It was luck!...

It was fate that besieged me,

that has me declared a duel to the death.

Hey beloved. . . More than rancor for his unusual abandonment;

6.    BEFORE YOU

You smile, as you pass, with irony

Because you judge me a defeated rival...

Fool! the woman you have chosen,

Before she was yours, she was mine.

 

On her pink lips I drank one day

The essence of the desired liquor

And what makes you laugh? what did you drink?

The shades of the ambrosia cup!

 

She tasted fortune in my arms.

For me it was the flower of her beauty.

I was, know it well, her first man.

 

Do you have it today? don't make me angry

when you kiss her, she closes her eyes

and, lowering her voice, she says my name...

 

7.    WITHOUT HEART

I stalked her, then without calm

and with a long dagger

tear virgin breast

of that soulless woman.

 

And when I saw her at my feet,

let out a horrible scream

and my hands bury,

in the wound that I opened!

 

Seek then reckless

inside her impious chest

and her chest was cold,

like the bottom of an ossuary.

 

Search…, search hard

and did not find what she was looking for;

The woman she loved so much,

she had no heart!

 

8. to PERU

Homeland of the heart! Luck one day

he plunged his sword into your chest with fury,

and today, dejected but not humiliated,

you look like a lion in agony.

 

Before, when I happily saw you,

you went for me with enthusiasm beloved;

but today, when I see that you are unhappy

I don't love you anymore… I idolize you!

 

Oh! Who could, Homeland, who could

dispel the darkness of your sky

and succumb wrapped in your flag!

 

I, such a fortune is all I long for,

and that they throw me in the face when I die,

to kiss the dust of your ground!

 

With affection,

Ruben