Santa Cruz de Tenerife

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Literature · Subcategory: Literary fragments · Year: 1968 · Authors: Pedro García Cabrera

Pedro García Cabrera (Vallehermoso, La Gomera, 19 August 1905 - Santa Cruz de Tenerife, 20 March 1981), is one of the great poets of Canarian literature. At a very young age he moved to La Laguna to study secondary school and pursue teaching. In the 1920s he joined the new avant-garde currents in the literary and artistic fields. Councillor of the Santa Cruz City Council for the Socialist Party in the 1931 elections, after the start of the Civil War he was imprisoned and sent to Africa. After the war ended, he continued writing and in 1968, in his book of poems Vuelta a la isla , he dedicates to the city of Santa Cruz de Tenerife one of the 37 ballads that make up the collection. In the words of the writer himself, each ballad was composed in the locations to which its content owes and « they do not intend to be a geographical description. Rather a personal version of them, gathering the accumulated experiences of each place over the years. That is why there are ballads that allude to adventures from long ago and that have kept the warmth of my adolescence. »

The one dedicated to Santa Cruz is as follows:

«Oh Santa Cruz of my life,
how well you ignite the soul;
to see your lights is to feel
that we are already at home.

The hardworking paths
that walk and retrace the island
upon glimpsing you lighten
their little donkeys of load.

It does not matter if they arrive late
to unshoe their wanderings,
like a mother you wait for them
your whole face a window.

Give me your hand, so I may
raise myself to your watchtowers,
that Chicharrera hand,
cordial and republican.

To forge your free will
the land was not smooth for you 
you only had the sea and the mountain.

Mountains of firm anguish,
mountains with the hope
to redeem myself and run
towards where the dawn is born,
carrying to bury the sorrows 
buried in your valleys.

But the sea did give you
an apple horizon,
lightness of a cutter and heart of a girl.

The sea, without keys or bars,
the sea, solitude that sings,
rocking freedoms 
in the midst of storms.

From the waves you learned
to live its democracy:
all different and all
a murmur of a clamouring people.

If the land said no
leaving you only Anaga
in the arms that row you
you carry your lineage tattooed.

A seafaring lineage,
of flawless voyage,
that is written in the annals
of the stones they throw at you.

The red and green discs
of your streets and squares
were once jellyfish
marking the distances.

Capital of transparencies,
city on the water’s prows,
for the gentle seas
how fighting is your boat.

Today you grow like foam,
that childhood friend
with whom your sand played
at killjoy on the beach.

She is always with you,
she almost lifts you up in flight
to the easel where rest
the walls of the houses
to climb the heights
and watch your back.

Pocket of distances,
post office of good times,
the courses seek in you
the final point of the anchor.

You almost never cry.
but if your tears flow
they are of injustices that chirp,
not of a spiteful woman.

Do not fear, your intimacy
saves you from all risk,
that even on wolf nights
with your nobility you disarm.

City of bird in flight,
Sunday of the gaze,
may my voice kneel
and complete in my words:
one day your markets
will have oranges from the sea.

Oh lights of welcome,
nest of the water’s prows,
to my rest awaits
your pillow smile.»

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