Evoking the relationship between Ernesto Che Guevara and poetry necessarily implies going back to his childhood when, hand in hand with his mother, he learned his first letters and with them he discovered, fascinated, literature, an inseparable companion and refuge in his frequent crises of depression. asthma. That passion of unrepentant reader started in childhood leads him to equally enjoy the adventures of Jules Verne , the adventures of Don Quixote and, of course, poetry, as confirmed by the testimony of his dear friend Alberto Granado , who remember that, when he was barely 14 years old, « Ernesto had fallen in love with Baudelaire , he read Verlaine and Mallarméin their original language, he liked to read Lorca and Machado , and from our continent he felt deep admiration for the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda , from whom he had transcribed his “Canto General” in its entirety».

But beyond the memories of the avid reader that those who knew him since his formative years kept, as an inescapable record of that vital relationship, are the manuscripts of what Ernesto called the Book Index , where in the midst of an eclectic catalog of authors , languages ​​and genres (whose only possible order was alphabetical) poetry stands out with works such as Milton 's El Paraíso Perdido , the selection made by Menéndez Pelayo of the 100 best poems in the Spanish language , three collections of poems by Rubén Darío ( Cantos de vida and hope , Ballads and Songs and Canto a la Argentina ), as well as two of Beloved Nervo ( El arquero Divino and Los jardines interiores ).

However, young Ernesto discovers that he also needs to read reality with the same avidity with which he devours the pages of books. And that's how "chapurreando a verse by Sábato», at just 22 years old, begins a solo tour of 12 provinces in northern Argentina. Of the few notes preserved in the diary of that trip, a few lines are surprising in response to the concern of those who, curious, approach him inquiring about the discoveries on the way: "What do I see?" he writes «at least I don't feed myself with the same ways as tourists (...). No, a people, a way and an interpretation of life are not known like that, that is the luxurious cover, but their soul is reflected in the patients in hospitals, the asylum seekers in police stations or the anxious pedestrian with whom they become intimate , while the Rio Grande shows its swollen turbulent channel below». The poetic act reflected in these lines discovers that, in ErnestoIt could be said that poetry acquires its original meaning of ποεσις [1] , in which word and action are closely intertwined.

In his travels through Latin America, he again resorts to letters to capture his impressions in the form of a diary, which he later converts into chronicles, in which the poetic force of the images with which he describes the journey that, more than geographical, has taken him, is undeniable. inside your being.

Some verses are also born from his relationship with poetry and, although he acknowledges the shortcomings of his poetic exercises - "the failed poet that I carry inside" he would describe himself years later in a letter to León Felipe -, it is revealing that he resorts to poetry as a means to express events that shock him, such as the ones he dedicates to the encounter with the pre-Columbian ruins, the oath-verses he writes to Fidel from the immigration station on Miguel Schultz street, in Mexico, or those in which he says goodbye to his little daughter Hilda Beatriz evoking the future image of himself.

In the difficult days of the Sierra Maestra, when common sense dictated carrying only the essentials to survive, Ernesto is not short of books, and among them, noted in his diary, are titles by Nicolás Guillén , José Martí and Rubén Martínez Villena , hence the idea in him of a visceral relationship with literature and, in particular, with poetry.

After the revolutionary triumph, in the arduous days of building a new society, he stops in the middle of a speech to the outstanding workers of the Ministry of Industries to recite some verses by the Spanish León Felipe, whom he invites to "argue at a distance." Of the poet, to whom a friendship began in the days of Mexico unites him, he keeps, in his personal office in the house of Nuevo Vedado, a dedicated copy of El Ciervo, which he later asked his wife Aleida to send him to Prague, where remains clandestine after the forced departure from the Belgian Congo. In the pages of the newspaper of this anti-colonialist feat there is also an index of books, and among the titles Poesía de paso , by Enrique Lihn , andParadise of Lezama Lima .

For the farewell he goes, as in his youth, to the refuge of verses, feeling that perhaps this makes it less painful, and together with the recording in his voice of some endearing poems, he gives his "only one in the world" some verses in love , who speak only of the dimension of dedication and of his infinite humanity.

Also in the Bolivian jungle he is accompanied by poetry, as confirmed by the so-called "Green Notebook" treasured for years as war booty by the Bolivian army, in which he transcribed 69 poems by four authors: César Vallejo, Pablo Neruda, Nicolás Guillén and Leon Felipe; and that he carried with him that fateful October of 1967.

Like his existence, his survival has been nourished by the poetry of those who turned the devastating news of his death into verse and who, 95 years after his birth, continue to dialogue between metaphors with the many presences of one of the most complete human beings in history. his time and ours.

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Taken from La Jiribilla .