Francisco Azuela/ a Contemporary Poet of Ancient Civilizations

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Francisco Azuela is a Mexican writer/poet born in 1948. He studied law at the University of Guanajuato and the National Autonomous University of Mexico –UNAM; Literature at the Ibero-American University of Mexico City and Pedagogy at the Free Studies Department of the Pan-American University of Mexico City; He also received courses, workshops, and seminars in philosophy and literature at Complutense Universities in Madrid and Laval de Québec in Canada.

In the years 1973 – 1983, he served as a diplomat at the Mexican embassy in Costa Rica and then in Honduras, during these years the Honduras government awarded him the Order of the Liberator of Central America by Francisco Morazán, and in 1981 the Honduran Academy of Language nominated him for the Cervantes International Literary Award. He then served for several years as the Director of the Library of the Chamber of Deputies of the State of Guanajuato and he became the General Director and Founder of EI Condor de Los Andes – Aguila Azteca. AC: an international cultural center currently based in Cochabamba, Bolivia. He is currently the Director of the Library at the Universidad Simón I. Patiño in Cochabamba, Bolivia.

Francisco Azuela comes from an artistic family. His great-uncle was Mariano Azuela, the author of one of the most famous novels about the Mexican Revolution (Los De Abajo). Fracisco’s mother, Maria Esperanza de Los Dolores Espinosa Hernandez was a writer and actress, and his father Ricardo Azuela Martin del Campo was a poet. Thus, Francisco from birth was surrounded by art and culture. He breathed the air of the word. Literature became part of himself. Even as a little boy, he expressed himself by putting his thoughts down on paper, but it had his fascination with preColumbian civilizations that shaped him as a poet. The Olmecs, Mayans, Aztecs, Incas, Zatopecs, Chicimecs, and Mixtecs are his greatest inspiration. In his poems, he wrote about the suffering, sadness, and loneliness of today’s people, referring to the preColumbian empires. Francisco Azuela’s poetry is not only a passion for ancient civilizations but also is a spirit of nationalism, war, neglect, fear, as well as love, life, death, and nature. It is worth mentioning that his poetry also reflects the fate of oppressed nations.

Francisco is the author of many books of poetry and prose, winner of many national and international awards. Most of his writings are in Spanish, but some of his poems have been translated into English.

Here are some of his poems translated into English by Ron Hudson and Margarit Feliciano.

The Death of the Poet

I
Like a regret
the sad eye of the homeland cries
for the death of the poet,
the flight of the birds
understood its geography,
it was hiding
in his Soul,
it was raining pain in his life,
the evening was falling
like the last sign of a mystery.

II
He sleeps beneath the starry night,
the homeland is in combat
with its silences.
The poet has already left,
he has gone away without farewell.

III
Tomorrow will be another day,
the day of a silent and profound death
like the ultimate sign of life
that is lost,
of the lost life
in the flight of the birds
whose small bodies
sketch figures of illusion in the air
guided by the magic of the setting sun,
by the eternal sun.

IV
You left me in the emptiness,
you freed my hand from your heart,
I did not know how to return,
I could not come back,
death embraced me
in its eternities.
You told me farewell
without recalling my memory
in a city such as this
that rains tears of wind.

Mayar XII
No one will come to say l am a corpse
without being aware that l lived,
my expectation was a stifled chant
emerging from the depths forever silenced,
breaking contact with foliage
so to become embalmed
in the earth’s dampness.
No one will come to say
I died two times,
the wings are way too large
to remain without motion.
Life will continue
on its sequel of blood.

Aztecal II
Caught between emotion and desire,
we shake play the world’s guitar
as our bodies stand naked by the sea-shore,
like two periwinkles.
You and I, Will become sea-anemones
when the waves flutter in the twilight,
on the feverish sand.
The I shall find a place where dreams will nestle,
A reef of water in each one of your breasts.
And like a naked tree
scattering white flowers,
I shall inhabit one-half of your body.
Thus the horses of dawn,
will unfasten your tresses
when the day will grow old
on your thighs made of water,
when you and I, shall hear the hymn of joyfulness.