The word “poetry” comes from the Latin poiesis, which means “quality of creating, making or producing”. It is a creative act where aesthetics and beauty are manifested through the word. Poetry is a literary genre associated with the expressive capacity and artistic sensitivity that takes the form of a verse, or sometimes prose.

In this article you will find a selection of short poems by famous and anonymous authors.

The best short poems

There are countless poets and women poets who have given us part of their artistic sensitivity through wonderful texts.

In this article you will find short poems by famous Latin American and Spanish authors, as well as some anonymous poets .

1. Here (Octavio Paz)

My steps on this street

Resonate

On another street

Where

I hear my steps

Passing in this street

Where

Only the fog is real.

2. To a general (Julio Cortázar)

Region of dirty hands from hairless brushes

of children face down from toothbrushes

Zone where the rat is ennobled

and there are innumerable flags and they sing hymns

and someone turns you on, motherfucker,

a medal on the chest

And you’re rotting the same.

3. Every time I think of you (Anonymous)

Every time I think of you,

my eyes break into tears;

and very sadly I wonder,

why do I love you so much?

4. Syndrome (Mario Benedetti)

I still have almost all my teeth

almost all my hair and very little gray

I can make and unmake love

climbing a ladder in pairs

and run forty meters behind the bus

so I shouldn’t feel old

but the big problem is that before

I wasn’t paying attention to these details.

5. On Clear Nights (Gloria Fuentes)

On clear nights,

I solve the problem of the loneliness of being.

I invite the moon and with my shadow we are three.

6. Harmony spelling (Antonio Machado)

Harmony spelling

who rehearses inexperienced hand.

I’ve had it. Cacophony

of the everlasting piano

that I used to listen to as a child

dreaming… I don’t know what,

with something that didn’t come,

everything that’s already gone.

7. Farewell (Alejandra Pizarnik)

An abandoned fire kills its light.

A bird in love is singing upstairs.

So many greedy creatures in my silence

and this little rain that comes with me.

8. Desvelada (Gabriela Mistral)

Since I am a queen and I was a beggar, now

I live in pure trembling that you leave me,

and I ask you, pale, every hour:

“Are you still with me? Oh, don’t go away!”

I’d like to do the smiles

and trusting now that you have come;

but even in sleep I’m afraid

and ask in my dreams, “You haven’t left?”

9. Rima LX (Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer)

My life is a wasteland,

flower I touch leaves;

that on my fatal path

someone is sowing evil

for me to pick up.

10. I remember leaving (Nezahualcoyotl)

What should I go with?

Will I leave nothing on earth to follow me?

How should my heart act?

Do we come to live in vain,

to sprout on the ground?

Let’s at least leave flowers

Let’s at least leave some songs

11. Your eyes are star (Anonymous)

Your eyes are bright,

your lips, velvet,

and a love like the one you feel

13. When the sea is round (Anonymous)

When the sea is round

and the sun stops shining,

that will be the day

that I can forget you.

14. America, I do not invoke your name in vain (Pablo Neruda)

AMERICA,

I do not invoke your name in vain.

When I hold the sword to the heart,

when I hold the leak in my soul,

when through the windows

a new day of yours penetrates me,

I am and I am in the light that produces me,

I live in the shadow that determines me,

I sleep and wake in your essential dawn:

sweet as grapes, and terrible,

sugar driver and punishment,

soaked in sperm of your species,

suckled in the blood of your heritage.

15. The six strings (Federico García Lorca)

The guitar

makes dreams cry.

The sobbing of the souls

losses

escapes through his mouth

round.

And like the tarantula,

weave a big star

for hunting sighs,

floating in their black

wooden cistern.

16. My Little Tree (Antonio García Teijeiro)

My tree had

its golden branches.

An envious wind

stole my treasure.

Today it has no branches

Today he has no dreams

my silent tree

my little tree.

17. Crisis (Francisco Gálvez)

Your voice seems from another time,

no longer has that warm tone

from before, nor the complicity

usual, they are just words

and his affection is now discreet:

in your messages there’s no message anymore.

18. Yo no soy yo (Juan Ramón Jiménez)

I’m not me.

I am this

that goes by my side without me seeing it,

that sometimes I’ll see,

and that, sometimes I forget.

He who is silent, serene, when I speak,

the one who forgives, sweet, when I hate,

he who walks where I am not,

the one that will be left standing when I die…

19. Minus your belly (Miguel Hernández)

Minus your belly,

everything is confusing.

Minus your belly,

all is future

fleeting, past

wasted, murky.

Minus your belly,

everything is hidden.

Minus your belly,

all insecure,

all last,

worldless dust.

Minus your belly,

everything is dark.

Minus your belly

clear and deep.

20. My Faith (Pedro Salinas)

I don’t trust the rose

paper,

so many times I made it

me with my hands.

I don’t trust the other one

true pink,

daughter of the sun and seasoning,

the bride of the wind.

Of you I never made,

of you who never made you,

I trust you, round

sure thing.

21. The poet is a pretender (Fernando Pessoa)

The poet is a pretender.

Fake it so completely

that even pretends to be pain

the pain you really feel,

And, in the pain they have read,

to read their readers come,

not the two he’s had,

but only the one they don’t have.

And so in life he gets,

distracting reason,

and turn, the toy train

which is called heart.

22. In the ear of a girl (Federico García Lorca)

I didn’t want to. (

Mademoiselle Isabel, blonde and French,

with a blackbird under the skin,

I don’t know whether that one or this one, O mademoiselle

Isabel, sing in it or if he in that one.

Princess of my childhood; you, princess

promise, with two carnation breasts;

I, le livre, le crayon, le…le…, oh Isabel,

Isabel…, your garden trembles at the table.

At night, you would straighten your hair,

I fell asleep, meditating on them

and in your body of pink: butterfly

pink and white, veiled.

Blow up my rose forever

-Mademoiselle Elizabeth- and my heaven.

25. Knives in April (Pere Gimferrer)

I hate teenagers.

They’re easy to pity.

There is a carnation that freezes in your teeth

and how they look at us when we cry.

But I’m going much further.

I can see a garden in his eyes.

Light spits on tiles

the broken harp of instinct.

Violently corner me

this passion of solitude

that young bodies cut down

and then burns in a single beam.

Shall I then be like these?

(life stops here)

It flames a willow tree in the silence.

It was worth being happy.

26. Love (Salvador Novo)

Love is this shy silence

near you, without you knowing it,

and remember your voice when you leave

and feel the warmth of your greeting.

To love is to wait for you

as if you were part of the sunset,

neither before nor after, so that we are alone

between games and stories

on the dry land.

To love is to perceive, when you are absent,

your perfume in the air I breathe,

and contemplate the star in which you walk away

when I close the door at night.

27. Pass and forget (Rubén Darío)

Pilgrim you are looking for in vain

a better way than your way,

how do you want me to shake your hand,

if my sign is your sign, Pilgrim?

You will never reach your destination;

you carry death in you like the worm

that gnaws away at what’s human in you…

what you have as human and divine!

Go on quietly, oh, wanderer!

You are still very far away

that unknown country you dream of…

And dreaming is an evil. Pass and forget,

for if you insist on dreaming, you insist

in throwing out the flame of your life.

28. With you (Luis Cernuda)

My land?

My land is you.

My people?

My people are you.

Exile and death

for me they are where

not you.

What about my life?

Tell me, my life,

what is it, if not you?

29. On my chest tree (Gloria Fuertes)

On my chest tree

there’s a bird incarnate.

When I see you he gets scared,

flutter, jump up and down.

On my chest tree

there’s a bird incarnate.

When I see you he gets scared,

you’re a scarecrow!

30. Desire (Luis Cernuda)

Through the quiet countryside of September,

of the yellow poplar some leaf,

like a broken star,

turning to the ground comes.

If so the unconscious soul,

Lord of the stars and leaves,

outside, lit shadow,

from life to death.