- Featured poems about the environment
- The Earth (Excerpt, Gabriela Mistral)
- The song of the pines (Excerpt, Rubén Darío)
- Man who looks at the earth (Mario Benedetti)
- Silva to the Agriculture of the Torrid Zone (Andrés Bello)
- Peace (Alfonsina Storni)
- References
The poems about the environment demonstrate the importance that this issue represents for writers.
Although concern about environmental problems has only gained momentum in recent times, poets have always found inspiration in Mother Earth.
In this sense, some recurring themes of many authors have been landscapes, seasons and various elements of nature.
Featured poems about the environment
The five environmental poems in this selection are by world-renowned and award-winning authors.
In fact, the number of poems about the environment by one of the poets, Gabriela Mistral, has earned her the title of the poet of nature.
The Earth (Excerpt, Gabriela Mistral)
Indian child, if you are tired,
you lie down on the Earth,
and the same if you are happy,
my son, play with it…
Wonderful things are heard
from the Indian drum of the Earth: you
can hear the fire that rises and falls
looking for the sky, and does not calm.
Wheel and wheel, you can hear the rivers
in waterfalls that are not counted.
The animals are heard bellowing;
the ax is heard eating the jungle.
Indian looms are heard sounding.
Threshing is heard, parties are heard.
Where the Indian is calling him,
the Indian drum answers him,
and tolls nearby and tolls far away,
like the one who flees and returns…
Everything takes it, everything is carried by
the holy back of the Earth:
what walks, what sleeps,
what frolics and what sadness;
and it carries alive and it carries dead
the Indian drum of the Earth.
The song of the pines (Excerpt, Rubén Darío)
Oh, pines, oh brothers in earth and environment,
I love you! You are sweet, you are good, you are serious.
You would say a tree that thinks and feels
pampered by auroras, poets and birds.
The winged sandal touched your forehead;
You have been a mast, a proscenium, a seat,
oh solar pines, oh pines of Italy,
bathed in grace, in glory, in blue!
Gloomy, without gold from the sun, taciturn,
in the midst of glacial mists and in
mountains of dreams, oh night pines,
oh pines of the North, you are beautiful too!
With gestures of statues, of mimes, of actors,
tending to the sweet caress of the sea,
oh pines of Naples, surrounded by flowers,
oh divine pines, I cannot forget you!
Man who looks at the earth (Mario Benedetti)
How would I want another luck for this poor parched one
who carries all the arts and crafts
in each one of her clods
and offers her revealing matrix
for the seeds that may never arrive,
how would she want a flow overflow to
come to redeem her
and soak her with its sun in boiling
or waving moons
and running through them inch by inch
and understanding it palm by palm
or the rain descending, inaugurating it
and leaving scars like ditches
and a dark and sweet mud
with eyes like puddles
or that in his biography
poor parched mother
suddenly burst the fertile people
with hoes and arguments
and plows and sweat and good news
and the premiere seeds glean
the legacy of old roots
Silva to the Agriculture of the Torrid Zone (Andrés Bello)
Hail, fertile zone,
that in the sun in love you circumscribe
the vague course, and how much being is animated
in every various climate,
caressed by its light, you conceive!
You weave the summer its garland
of pomegranates ears; you
give the grapes to the boiling vat;
not of purple fruit, or red, or yellow,
your beautiful forests
lack any nuance; and
the wind drinks in them a thousand aromas;
and grays go without a story
grazing your vegetables, from the plain
that is bordered by the horizon,
to the erect mountain,
of inaccessible snow that is always white.
Peace (Alfonsina Storni)
We are going towards the trees… the dream
Will become in us by celestial virtue.
We go towards the trees; the night
will be soft for us, the sadness slight
We go towards the trees, the
Sleeping soul of wild perfume.
But be quiet, don't talk, be pious;
Don't wake up the sleeping birds.
References
- Figueroa, L.; Silva, K. and Vargas, P. (2000). Land, Indian, Woman: Gabriela Mistral's Social Thought. Santiago de Chile: Lom Ediciones.
- Rubén Darío (1949). Poetic Anthology. Berkeley: University of California Press.
- Benedetti, M. (2014). Love, women and life. Barcelona: Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial.
- Florit, E. and Patt, BP (1962). Portraits of Latin America. California: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
- Carriego, E. (1968). Complete poems. Buenos Aires: Editorial Universitaria.