Julia De Burgos Quotes

Don't let the hand you hold hold you down.

Tell me, in storms, that you love me.

Voy a hacer un rompeolas con mi alegria pequena. No quiero que sepa el mar que por mi pecho van penas.

Yo, múltiple, como en contradicción

Meanwhile, your life and my life have kissed.

I adored you without thinking of you physically. I kissed your smile and adored your illusions.

I was a star spilled in your arms.

Beauty of blood. Innocent beauty flowering in my weeping.

Already the people murmur that I am your enemy because they say that in verse I give the world your me. They lie, Julia de Burgos. They lie, Julia de Burgos. Who rises in my verses is not your voice. It is my voice because you are the dressing and the essence is me; and the most profound abyss is spread between us. You are the cold doll of social lies, and me, the virile starburst of the human truth. You, honey of courtesan hypocrisies; not me; in all my poems I undress my heart. You are like your world, selfish; not me who gambles everything betting on what I am. You are only the ponderous lady very lady; not me; I am life, strength, woman. You belong to your husband, your master; not me; I belong to nobody, or all, because to all, to all I give myself in my clean feeling and in my thought. You curl your hair and paint yourself; not me; the wind curls my hair, the sun paints me. You are a housewife, resigned, submissive, tied to the prejudices of men; not me; unbridled, I am a runaway Rocinante snorting horizons of God's justice. You in yourself have no say; everyone governs you; your husband, your parents, your family, the priest, the dressmaker, the theatre, the dance hall, the auto, the fine furnishings, the feast, champagne, heaven and hell, and the social, "what will they say." Not in me, in me only my heart governs, only my thought; who governs in me is me. You, flower of aristocracy; and me, flower of the people. You in you have everything and you owe it to everyone, while me, my nothing I owe to nobody. You nailed to the static ancestral dividend, and me, a one in the numerical social divider, we are the duel to death who fatally approaches. When the multitudes run rioting leaving behind ashes of burned injustices, and with the torch of the seven virtues, the multitudes run after the seven sins, against you and against everything unjust and inhuman, I will be in their midst with the torch in my hand.

I am life, I am strength, I am woman.

Recuerdo que algún día yo le hablé de mi río y una como tormenta se agitó en sus estrañas. No sé si fue mi pecho que tembló de recuerdo o si fueron mis ojos que asomaron nostalgias." "I remember a day when I spoke of my river and something like a storm stirred in his being. Was it my breast that trembled with the memory Was it nostalgia that showed through my eyes

But I was made of nows, and my feet level on the promissory earth would not accept walking backwards and went forward, forward, mocking the ashes to reach the kiss of new paths." "I Was My Own Route

Soy feliz en mi amor, pero esa espada suspendida sobre mi cabeza a todas horas, a veces me ciega el sueño y me angustia de tal modo el alma que me asaltan y me tiemblan los más horrendos presentimientos. Ese es mi destino: la sombra al lado de la luz, el dolor junto a la felicidad.

Puerto Rico depende de tu vida y tu nombre, colgando en ti van millones de esperanzas para resucitar en lo que nos fue robado y hacer valer de nuevo el honor de la Patria. Puerto Rico depends on your life and your name, resting on you are millions of hopes to be resurrected in what was stolen from us and to renew the worth of the Nation's honor. (Puerto Rico está en tí / Puerto Rico Is in You)

I Love You" I love you... and you move the time of my life without hours. I love you in the pallid streams that travel in the night, and never finish conveying stars to the sea. I love you in that morning unpinned from the flight of centuries that fled its white ship to the water without waves where your voice and my song sadly swam. I love you in the pain without tears that tell so many nights the dream has gathered: in the sky inverted in my pupils to look at you cosmically; in the hollow voice of my noise of centuries crumbling. I love you (scream of white night) in the insomniac thoughts where in birds my spirit has returned. I love you... My love lightly escapes from expressions and routes, and goes breaking the shadows and reaching your image from the innocent point where I am grass and birdsong.

¡Obreros! Picad el miedo. Vuestra es la tierra desnuda. Saltad el hambre y la muerte por sobre la honda laguna, y uníos a los campesinos, y a los que en caña se anudan. ¡Rómpanse un millón de puños contra moral tan injusta! ¡Alzad, alzad vuestros brazos como se alzaron en Rusia! Workers! Slash the fear. Yours is the naked earth. Leap hunger and death over the deep lagoon, and join the peasants and those knotted to the cane. Break a million fists against so unjust a morality! Raise, raise your arms like they were raised in Russia! ("Desde el Puente Martín Peña")

La senda me moja bajo los ojos que se hacen agua, y el viento se va salado con la sal de tantas lágrimas. A lamer el río la sangre se estira en lenguas de llamas. El agua del río huele a un millón de puñaladas, y las naciones de Europa con tanta sangre se bañan, y sus mentiras condensan en esta mentira clásica: son hombres que dan su vida por sus banderas y patrias... Under eyes that become water the road wets me, and the wind leaves salted with the salt of so many tears. To lick the river, the blood stretches in tongues of flames. The water of the river smells of a million stab wounds, and the nations of Europe bathe with so much blood, and their lies condense in this classic lie: they are men who give their lives for their flags and countries... ("Ochenta Mil/Eighty Thousand")

Debe ser la caricia de lo inútil, la tristeza sin fin de ser poeta, de cantar y cantar, sin que se rompa la tragedia sin par de la existencia. It must be the caress of the useless, the endless sadness of being a poet, of singing and singing, without breaking the peerless tragedy of existence. (From "Canción Amarga/Bitter Song")

¡Río Grande de Loíza!...Mi manantial, mi río, desde que alzóme al mundo el pétalo materno; contigo se bajaron desde las rudas cuestas, a buscar nuevos surcos, mis pálidos anhelos; y mi niñez fue toda un poema en el río, y un río en el poema de mis primeros sueños. Río Grande de Loíza!...My wellspring, my river since the maternal petal lifted me to the world; my pale desires came down in you from the craggy hills to find new furrows; and my childhood was all a poem in the river, and a river in the poem of my first dreams.

Rio Grande de Loíza!... Río grande. LLanto grande. El más grande de todos nuestros llantos isleños, si no fuera mas grande el que de mí se sale por los ojos del alma para mi esclavo pueblo. Río Grande de Loíza!...Great river. Great flood of tears. The greatest of all our island's tears save those greater that come from the eyes of my soul for my enslaved people.

Yo, fatalista, mirando la vida llegándose y alejándose de mis semejantes. Yo, dentro de mí misma, siempre en espera de algo que no acierta mi mente. Me, fatalist, watching life coming and going from my contemporaries. Me, inside myself, always waiting for something that my mind can't define. ("Momentos/Moments")

A cada paso adelantado en mi ruta hacia el frente rasgaba mis espaldas el aleteo desesperado de los troncos viejos. At each advancing step on my route forward back was ripped by the desperate flapping wings of the old guard. (From "Yo misma fui mi ruta/I was my own route")

Los Hitler, los Mussolini... ¡Balas! ¡Balas! ¡Balas! ¡Balas! Las dos víboras de Europa que con la muerte se pactan. Pero ... allá vienen las viudas, las madres y las hermanas. El aire se va salado con la sal de tantas lágrimas. El agua del río huele a un millón de puñaladas. Por allá vienen las viudas, las madres y las hermanas. Subiendo la cuesta vienen todas ellas enlutadas, y su dolor canta el himno que hará el futuro de España. ¡Ochenta mil hombres muertos! The Hitlers, the Mussolinis... Bullets! Bullets! Bullets! Bullets! The two vipers of Europe who pact with death. But...there come the widows, the mothers and the sisters. The air leaves salted with the salt of so many tears. The water of the river smells of a million stab wounds. There come the widows the mothers and the sisters. Climbing the hill they come all in mourning and their pain sings the hymn that will make the future of Spain. Eighty thousand men dead! (From "Ochenta Mil/Eighty Thousand")

Tú, tú, eternamente tú, mi corazón hallado en el otoño de una vida angustiada y sin espera. Le diste corazón al universo que se ocultaba en mi, y supiste los cauces de mi alma y recogiste pétalos aislados en la flor del cariño, para prender la rosa que fue tuya desde el azul incierto de un primero de octubre enamorado.

Te quiero... y me mueves el tiempo de mi vida sin horas.

Como suena en mi alma la idea de una noche completa en tus brazos

Va descalza la vida por la nube del mar desde que alzo hacia ti mi corazon sus vuelvas.

Es algo de lo eterno al goce del minuto lo que tu empeño busca por la ruta encendida de los claros anhelos.

Where is the voice of freedom, / freedom to laugh, / to move / without the heavy phantom of despair? (From "Farewell from Welfare Island")

Dícenme que mi abuelo fue el esclavo por quien el amo dio trienta monedas. Ay, ay, ay, que el esclavo fue mi abuelo es mi pena, es mi pena. Si hubiera sido el amo, sería mi vergüenza; que en los hombres, igual que en las naciones, si el ser el siervo es no tener derechos, el ser el amo es no tener conciencia. They tell me that my grandfather was the slave for whom the master paid thirty coins. Ay, ay, ay, that the slave was my grandfather is my sadness, is my sadness. If he had been the master it would be my shame: that in men, as in nations, if being the slave is having no rights being the master is having no conscience. (Ay, Ay, Ay de la grifa negra/Ay, Ay, Ay of the Kinky-Haired Negress)

Porque tengamos cerca de la muerte, un consuelo, Puerto Rico, mi patria, te reclama en su suelo, y por mi voz herida, se conduce hasta tí! Because near to death we will have one consolation, Puerto Rico, my homeland, clamors for you on its soil, and through my wounded voice, conveys itself to you! (A José Marti / To José Marti)

La locura de mi alma no puede reclinarse, vive en lo inquieto, en lo desordenado, en el desequilibrio de las cosas dinámicas, en el silencio del libre pensador, que vive solo, en callado destierro. The madness of my soul cannot repose, it lives in the restlessness in the disorder in the imbalance of things dynamic, in the silence of the free thinker, who lives alone, in quiet exile. (From Mi Alma / My Soul)

Vive América, Bolívar, y también vive tu espada mientras haya un solo esclavo que te ultraje o un tirano que pretenda profanar la libertad. Bolívar, America Lives! and your sword also lives so long as a single slave rapes your ideal or a tyrant tries to profane liberty. (From A Simon Bolívar / To Simon Bolívar)

Right above the mirror is the Julia De Burgos quote I’ve learned to love: “Don’t let the hand you hold, hold you down.