Diálogos is proud to release a new collection of poetry by Spanish surrealist Leopoldo María Panero, in a translation by Arturo Mantecón. At 326 large format pages, The Death of Poetry represents a major retrospective of the mad genius’s work. 

Born in 1948, Panero was the son of another poet, Leopoldo Panero, who was a favorite of the fascist Franco regime. The precocious Leopoldo María soon rebelled against his family’s politics (he was arrested for demonstrating with the communists at the age of 18) as well as most other social norms in the repressive atmosphere of the time. His mother sought to “cure” him of his homosexuality by putting him in an asylum where he received shock treatments. This experience left him traumatized but unrepentant, and he would spend much of the rest of his life in and out of various institutions. He died in 2014.

This poem from the collection will give you a taste:

The Plan of a Kiss

I will kill you tomorrow when the moon comes out
and the first loon tells me its word
will kill you tomorrow just before dawn
when you are in bed, lost in dreams
and it will be like copulation or semen on your lips
like a kiss or an embrace, or like an act of gratitude.
I will kill you tomorrow when the moon comes out
and the first loon tells me its word
and in its beak it will bring me your death warrant
which will be like a kiss, or an act of gratitude
or like a prayer for the never-arriving daybreak.
I will kill you tomorrow when the moon comes out
and the third dog barks in the ninth hour
in the tenth leafless tree now without sap
no one any longer knowing why it stands in the earth.
I will kill you tomorrow when the thirteenth leaf
falls upon the ground of misery
and you will be a leaf or some pallid thrush
that returns in the remote secret of the afternoon.
I will kill you tomorrow, and you will beg for forgiveness
for that obscene flesh, for that dark sex
which this brilliance of iron will have for a phallus
which that sepulcher, forgetfulness, will have for a kiss.
I will kill you tomorrow when the moon comes out
and you will see what a beauty you are when you are dead
all full of flowers, with your arms crossed
and your lips closed like when you pray
or when you implore me once more for the word.
I will kill you tomorrow when the moon comes out
and from that heaven of which legends speak
you will beg, tomorrow, for me and my salvation.
I will kill you tomorrow when the moon comes out
when you see an angel armed with a dagger
naked and silent at the foot of your white bed.
I will kill you tomorrow and you will see that you will ejaculate
when that coldness passes between your two legs.
I will kill you tomorrow when the moon comes out.
I will kill you tomorrow, and I will love your ghost
and I will run to your grave on those nights
when my throbbing cock burns anew
the dreams of sex, the mysteries of semen
and I will make of your tombstone my first bed
for to dream of gods, and trees, and mothers
and for playing at dice in the night.
I will kill you tomorrow when the moon comes out
and the first loon tells me its word.

—Leopoldo María Panero, translated by Arturo Mantecón. From The Death of Poetry.