When nothing personally exaltant is expected,
but we pulse and follow beyond consciousness,
fiercely existing, blindly affirming,
like a pulse striking the darkness,


When we face directly
the dizzying clear eyes of death,
truths are spoken:
the barbaric, terrible, loving cruelties.

The poems are spoken
that enlarge the lungs of those, suffocated,
asking to be, asking for rhythm,
asking for law to what they feel excessive.

With the speed of instinct,
with the lightning of prodigy,
as magical evidence, what is real becomes
identical to itself.

Poetry for the poor, necessary poetry
like the daily bread,
like the air we demand thirteen times a minute,
to be and, as we are, to give a yes that glorifies.

Because we live by blows, because we are barely allowed
to say that we are who we are,
our songs cannot be, without sin, an ornament.
We are touching the bottom.

(...)

POETRY IS A WEAPON LOADED WITH FUTURE
(Gabriel Celaya. From "Cantos iberos," 1955)