This book gathers the combustion, the smoke, and the ash of Ángel Guinda’s finest verses, first published in the edition he accepted shortly before meeting the same death that, writing with intensity, he sought to decipher: “Me he fumado la vida / como el tiempo se me ha fumado a mí / cuando huía de mi sombra, / y mi vida hecha polvo, / y el polvo que seré / bajo el árbol secreto de la muerte”.
At Zenda we present five poems from Me he fumado la vida: Antología poética (Visor), by Ángel Guinda.
***
I began to walk among the clouds
like a wingless bird.
I longed for peace, I longed for the day,
the air, the earth, the water.
I thought everything was pointless
and I kicked time to the curb.
Now I live in the instant
suspended by a thread of hope.
And, sometimes, I open the door
believing that someone is calling me,
and it is a deep desire
like a whisper of home.
Poetry, poetry,
a reality that does not deceive me.
***
I WRITE AS I HATE
I write in order to abandon myself,
to make infinite the solitude I accompany.
I write to fly
over the world
and to explore labyrinths of darkness and mirrors.
I write to avoid pretending
when I boil devastation and faith in chaos.
I write to conquer
the temptation to endure
and, less unrestrained, to die more.
So that what was written yesterday can be broken tomorrow,
to take a measure of the abyss, to curse, to corrupt,
to desist, to switch off, to awaken to sleep, to hide, to abolish.
I write to kill.
***
BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE
A man,
weary of being among humans,
a carved statue in a world he abhors,
appears before his own conscience.
A man,
who walked the roads of excess
and climbed the ramps of knowledge,
shut in by his failures and renunciations,
despising the flashy fires of vanity,
the thirst to be or victimhood,
sets out to review his life
before it is too late.
***
I ACCUSE MYSELF
Struck by a bolt of shadow,
like all youths, I came
to have life dragged ahead of me.
I have passed by, I was silent, I closed my eyes:
in the name of your generation I accuse myself!
If I write for nothing, for no one,
the word is surplus.
If suffering is not living,
the world is poorly made,
any past time was worse, and I accept it;
if I do not punch the sky to pieces,
if I do not break the light nor tear the air,
if I endure and swallow so much rot,
I am dead: kill me once more.
***
THE BOTTLE
Inside this bottle the sea fits.
Inside this bottle
the sky wobbles,
the drunkards’ sun wobbles
with its burden of truth,
with the tide of their bitterness.
Inside this bottle flies dance
like bombed helicopters,
cockroaches with umbrellas stroll.
Inside this bottle absence rains.
Its revolving wall distorts my features,
bends my brows, opens my pupils:
there are hatchet storms in its magma.
Inside this bottle lies the void
that I fill when I drink and drink.
Left for recycling,
I am this bottle.
—————————————
Author: Ángel Guinda. Title: I Have Smoked Life: A Poetic Anthology. Publisher: Visor. For sale: Todos tus libros.
BIOGRAPHY
Ángel Guinda (Zaragoza, 1948 – Madrid, 2022) was the author of a lyric body of work inheriting the finest tradition of Spanish poetry, yet crafted with an innovative language, which has led him to be described as a rarity among the Novísimos. He received the Premio de las Letras Aragonesas in 2010 and was a finalist for the Nacional de la Crítica or the Nacional de Poesía. His work has been translated into English, French, Italian, Portuguese, among other languages. Considered a fierce and vital poet, an outsider of his generation, Ángel Guinda burned his own life to leave a stark testament to the human condition.