Ode to the Cat by Pablo Neruda
There was something wrong
with the animals:
their tails were too long, and
they had
unfortunate heads.
Then they started coming
together,
little by little
fitting together to make a
landscape,
developing birthmarks, grace,
flight.
But the cat,
only the cat
turned out finished,
and proud:
Follow up:
born in a state of total
completion,
it sticks to itself and knows
exactly what it wants.
Men would like to be fish or
fowl,
snakes would rather have
wings,
and dogs are would-be lions.
Engineers want to be poets,
flies emulate swallows,
and poets try hard to act like
flies.
But the cat
wants nothing more than to
be a cat,
and every cat is pure cat
from its whiskers to its tail,
from sixth sense to squirming
rat,
from nighttime to its golden
eyes.
Nothing hangs together
quite like a cat:
neither flowers nor the moon
have
such consistency.
It's a thing by itself,
like the sun or a topaz,
and the elastic curve of its
back,
which is both subtle and
confident,
is like the curve of a sailing
ship's prow.
The cat's yellow eyes
are the only
slot
for depositing the coins of
night.
O little
emperor without a realm,
conqueror without a
homeland,
diminutive parlor tiger, nuptial
sultan of heavens
roofed in erotic tiles:
when you pass
in rough weather
and poise
four nimble paws
on the ground,
sniffing,
suspicious
of all earthly things
(because everything
feels filthy
to the cat's immaculate paw),
you claim
the touch of love in the air.
O freelance household
beast, arrogant
vestige of night,
lazy, agile
and strange,
O fathomless cat,
secret police
of human chambers
and badge
of burnished velvet!
Surely there is nothing
enigmatic
in your manner,
maybe you aren't a mystery
after all.
You're known to everyone,
you belong
to the least mysterious tenant.
Everyone may believe it,
believe they're master,
owner, uncle
or companion
to a cat,
some cat's colleague,
disciple or friend.
But not me.
I'm not a believer.
I don't know a thing about
cats.
I know everything else,
including life and its
archipelago,
seas and unpredictable cities,
plant life,
the pistil and its scandals,
the pluses and minuses of
math.
I know the earth's volcanic
protrusions
and the crocodile's unreal
hide,
the fireman's unseen kindness
and the priest's blue atavism.
But cats I can't figure out.
My mind slides on their
indifference.
Their eyes hold ciphers of
gold.
Ode to a Cluster of Violets
By Pablo Neruda
Crisp cluster
plunged in shadow.
Drops of violet water
and raw sunlight
floated up with your scent.
A fresh
subterranean beauty
climbed up from your buds
thrilling my eyes and my life.
One at a time, flowers
that stretched forward
silvery stalks,
creeping closer to an obscure light
shoot by shoot in the shadows,
till they crowned
the mysterious mass
with an intense weight of perfume
and together
formed a single star
with a far-off scent and a purple center.
Poignant cluster
intimate
scent
of nature,
you resemble
a wave, or a head of hair,
or the gaze
of a ruined water nymph
sunk in the depths.
But up close,
in your fragrance’s
blue brazenness,
you exhale the earth,
an earthly flower, an earthen
smell and your ultraviolet
gleam
in volcanoes’ faraway fires.
Into your loveliness I sink
a weathered face,
a face that dust has often abused.
You deliver
something out of the soil.
It isn’t simply perfume,
nor simply the perfect cry
of your entire color, no: it’s
a word sprinkled with dew,
a flowering wetness with roots.
Fragile cluster of starry
violets,
tiny, mysterious
planet
of marine phosphorescence,
nocturnal bouquet nestled in green leaves:
the truth is
there is no blue word to express you.
Better than any word
is the pulse of your scent.
Ode to a Bar of Soap
by Pablo Neruda
When I pick up
a bar
of soap
to take a closer look,
its powerful aroma
astounds me:
O fragrance,
I don’t know
where you come from,
–what
is your home town?
Did my cousin send you
or did you come from clean
clothes
and the hands that washed
them,
splotchy from the cold basin?
Did you come from those
lilacs
I remember so well,
from the amaranth’s
blossom,
from green plums
clinging to a branch?
Have you come from the
playing field
and a quick swim
beneath the
trembling
willows?
Is yours the aroma of thickets
or of young love or birthday
cakes? Or is yours the smell
of a dampened heart?
What is it that you bring
to my nose
so early
every day,
bar of soap,
before I climb into my morning
bath
and go into the streets
among men weighed down
with goods?
What is this smell of people,
a faint smell,
of petticoat
flowers,
the honey of woodland girls?
Or is it
the old
half forgotten
air of a
fiveand-ten,
the heavy white fabric
a peasant holds in his hands,
rich thickness
of molasses, or the red
carnation
that lay on my aunt’s
sideboard
like a lightning-bolt of red,
like a red arrow?
Do I detect
your pungent odor
in cut-rate
dry goods and unforgettable
cologne, in barbershops
and the clean countryside,
in sweet water?
This is what
you are,
soap: you are pure delight,
the passing fragrance
that slithers
and sinks like a
blind fish
to the bottom of the bathtub.
Ode to a Pair of Socks
By Pablo Neruda
Maru Mori brought me
a pair
of socks
that she knit with her
shepherd's hands.
Two socks as soft
as rabbit fur.
I thrust my feet
inside them
as if they were
two
little boxes
knit
from threads
of sunset
and sheepskin.
My feet were
two woolen
fish
in those outrageous
socks,
two gangly,
navy-blue sharks
impaled
on a golden thread,
two giant blackbirds,
two cannons:
thus
were my feet
honored
by
those
heavenly
socks.
They were
so beautiful
I found my feet
unlovable
for the very first time,
like two crusty old
firemen, firemen
unworthy
of that embroidered
fire,
those incandescent
socks.
Nevertheless
I fought
the sharp temptation
to put them away
the way schoolboys
put
fireflies in a bottle,
the way scholars
hoard
holy writ.
I fought
the mad urge
to lock them
in a golden
cage
and feed them birdseed
and morsels of pink
melon
every day.
Like jungle
explorers
who deliver a young
deer
of the rarest species
to the roasting spit
then wolf it down
in shame,
I stretched
my feet forward
and pulled on
those
gorgeous
socks,
and over them
my shoes.
So this is
the moral of my ode:
beauty is beauty
twice over
and good things are
doubly
good
when you're talking
about a pair of wool
socks
in the dead of winter.
Ode to the Apple
~ Pablo Neruda
You, apple,
You are pure balm,
are the object
fragrant bread,
of my praise.
the cheese
I want to fill
of all that flowers.
my mouth
with your name.
When we bite into
I want to eat you whole.
your round innocence
we too regress
You are always
for a moment
fresh, like nothing
to the state
and nobody.
of the newborn:
You have always
there’s still some apple in us all.
just fallen
from Paradise:
I want
dawn’s
total abundance,
rosy cheek
your family
full
multiplied.
and perfect!
I want
a city,
Compared
a republic,
to you
a Mississippi River
the fruits of the earth
of apples,
are
and I want to see
so awkward:
gathered on its banks
bunchy grapes,
the world’s
muted
entire
mangos,
population
bony
united and reunited
plums, and submerged
in the simplest act we know:
figs.
I want us to bite into an apple.
Ode to an Artichoke
~ Pablo Neruda
The artichoke
goes proud
make trial
of delicate heart
in its pomegranate
of an artichoke:
erect
burnishes.
she reflects, she examines,
in its battle-dress, builds
Till, on a day,
she candles them up to the
its minimal cupola;
each by the other,
light like an egg,
keeps
the artichoke moves
never flinching;
stark
to its dream
she bargains,
in its scallop of
of a market place
she tumbles her prize
scales.
in a market bag
Around it,
in the big willow
among shoes and a
demoniac vegetables
hoppers:
cabbage head,
bristle their thicknesses,
a battle formation.
a bottle
devise
Most warlike
of vinegar; is back
tendrils and belfries,
of defilades-
in her kitchen.
the bulb’s agitations;
with men
The artichoke drowns in a
while under the subsoil
in the market stalls,
pot.
the carrot
white shirts
sleeps sound in its
in the soup-greens,
So you have it:
rusty mustaches.
artichoke field marshals,
a vegetable, armed,
Runner and filaments
close-order conclaves,
a profession
bleach in the vineyards,
commands, detonations,
(call it an artichoke)
whereon rise the vines.
and voices,
whose end
The sedulous cabbage
a crashing of crate staves.
is millennial.
arranges its petticoats;
oregano
sweetens a world;
and the artichoke
dulcetly there in a
gardenplot,
armed for a skirmish,
We taste of that
And
sweetness,
Maria
dismembering scale after
come
scale.
down
We eat of a halcyon paste:
with her hamper
it is green at the artichoke
to
heart.
Ode to Bread
By Pablo Neruda
Bread,
you rise
from flour,
water
and fire.
Dense or light,
flattened or round,
you duplicate
the mother's
rounded womb,
and earth's
twice-yearly
swelling.
How simple
you are, bread,
and how profound!
You line up
on the baker's
powdered trays
like silverware or plates
or pieces of paper
and suddenly
life washes
over you,
there's the joining of seed
and fire,
and you're growing, growing
all at once
like
hips, mouths, breasts,
mounds of earth,
or people's lives.
The temperature rises, you're
overwhelmed
by fullness, the roar
of fertility,
and suddenly
your golden color is fixed.
And when your little wombs
were seeded,
a brown scar
laid its burn the length
of your two halves'
toasted
juncture.
Now,
whole,
you are
mankind's energy,
a miracle often admired,
the will to live itself.
O bread familiar to every mouth,
we will not kneel before you:
men
do no
implore
unclear gods
or obscure angels:
we will make our own bread
out of sea and soil,
we will plant wheat
on our earth and the planets,
bread for every mouth,
for every person,
our daily bread.
Because we plant its seed
and grow it
not for one man
but for all,
there will be enough:
there will be bread
for all the peoples of the earth.
And we will also share with one
another
whatever has
the shape and the flavor of
bread:
the earth itself,
beauty
and love-all
taste like bread
and have its shape,
the germination of wheat.
Everything
exists to be shared,
to be freely given,
to multiply.
This is why, bread,
if you flee
from mankind's houses,
if they hide you away
or deny you,
if the greedy man
pimps for you or
the rich man
takes you over,
if the wheat
does not yearn for the furrow
and the soil:
then, bread,
we will refuse to pray:
bread
we will refuse to beg.
We will fight for you instead,
side by side with the others,
with everyone who knows
hunger.
We will go after you
in every river and in the air.
We will divide the entire earth
among ourselves
so that you may germinate,
and the earth will go forward
with us:
water, fire, and mankind
fighting at our side.
Crowned
with sheafs of wheat,
we will win
earth and bread for everyone.
Then
life itself
will have the shape of bread,
deep and simple,
immeasurable and pure.
Every living thing
will have its share
of soil and life,
and the bread we eat each
morning,
everyone's daily bread,
will be hallowed
and sacred,
because it will have been won
by the longest and costliest
of human struggles.
This earthly Victory
does not have wings:
she wears bread on her shoulders
instead.
Courageously she soars,
setting the world free,
like a baker
born aloft on the wind.
Ode To The Onion by Pablo Neruda
Onion,
luminous flask,
your beauty formed
petal by petal,
crystal scales expanded you
and in the secrecy of the dark earth
your belly grew round with dew.
Under the earth
the miracle
happened
and when your clumsy
green stem appeared,
and your leaves were born
like swords
in the garden,
the earth heaped up her power
showing your naked transparency,
and as the remote sea
in lifting the breasts of Aphrodite
duplicating the magnolia,
so did the earth
make you,
onion
clear as a planet
and destined
to shine,
constant constellation,
round rose of water,
upon
the table
of the poor.
You make us cry without hurting us.
I have praised everything that exists,
but to me, onion, you are
more beautiful than a bird
of dazzling feathers,
heavenly globe, platinum goblet,
unmoving dance
of the snowy anemone
and the fragrance of the earth lives
in your crystalline nature.
Ode To The Lemon by Pablo Neruda
From blossoms
released
by the moonlight,
from an
aroma of exasperated
love,
steeped in fragrance,
yellowness
drifted from the lemon tree,
and from its plantarium
lemons descended to the earth.
Tender yield!
The coasts,
the markets glowed
with light, with
unrefined gold;
we opened
two halves
of a miracle,
congealed acid
trickled
from the hemispheres
of a star,
the most intense liqueur
of nature,
unique, vivid,
concentrated,
born of the cool, fresh
lemon,
of its fragrant house,
its acid, secret symmetry.
Knives
sliced a small
cathedral
in the lemon,
the concealed apse, opened,
revealed acid stained glass,
drops
oozed topaz,
altars,
cool architecture.
So, when you hold
the hemisphere
of a cut lemon
above your plate,
you spill
a universe of gold,
a
yellow goblet
of miracles,
a fragrant nipple
of the earth's breast,
a ray of light that was made fruit,
the minute fire of a planet.
Ode To a Large Tuna in the Market by Pablo Neruda
Among the market greens,
a bullet
from the ocean
depths,
a swimming
projectile,
I saw you,
dead.
All around you
were lettuces,
sea foam
of the earth,
carrots,
grapes,
but
of the ocean
truth,
of the unknown,
of the
unfathomable
shadow, the
depths
of the sea,
the abyss,
only you had survived,
a pitch-black, varnished
witness
to deepest night.
Only you, well-aimed
dark bullet
from the abyss,
mangled at one tip,
but constantly
reborn,
at anchor in the current,
winged fins
windmilling
in the swift
flight
of
the
marine
shadow,
a mourning arrow,
dart of the sea,
olive, oily fish.
I saw you dead,
a deceased king
of my own ocean,
green
assault, silver
submarine fir,
seed
of seaquakes,
now
only dead remains,
yet
in all the market
yours
was the only
purposeful form
amid
the bewildering rout
of nature;
amid the fragile greens
you were
a solitary ship,
armed
among the vegetables,
fin and prow black and oiled,
as if you were still
the vessel of the wind,
the one and only
pure
ocean
machine:
unflawed, navigating
the waters of death.
Ode To Conger Chowder by Pablo Neruda
In the storm-tossed
Chilean
sea
lives the rosy conger,
giant eel
of snowy flesh.
And in Chilean
stewpots,
along the coast,
was born the chowder,
thick and succulent,
a boon to man.
You bring the conger, skinned,
to the kitchen
(its mottled skin slips off
like a glove,
leaving the
grape of the sea
exposed to the world),
naked,
the tender eel
glistens,
prepared
to serve our appetites.
Now
you take
garlic,
first, caress
that precious
ivory,
smell
its irate fragrance,
then
blend the minced garlic
with onion
and tomato
until the onion
is the color of gold.
Meanwhile steam
our regal
ocean prawns,
and when
they are
tender,
when the savor is
set in a sauce
combining the liquors
of the ocean
and the clear water
released from the light of the onion,
then
you add the eel
that it may be immersed in glory,
that it may steep in the oils
of the pot,
shrink and be saturated.
Now all that remains is to
drop a dollop of cream
into the concoction,
a heavy rose,
then slowly
deliver
the treasure to the flame,
until in the chowder
are warmed
the essences of Chile,
and to the table
come, newly wed,
the savors
of land and sea,
that in this dish
you may know heaven.
Ode To a Chestnut on the Ground by Pablo Neruda
From bristly foliage
you fell
complete, polished wood, gleaming mahogany,
as perfect
as a violin newly
born of the treetops,
that falling
offers its sealed-in gifts,
the hidden sweetness
that grew in secret
amid birds and leaves,
a model of form,
kin to wood and flour,
an oval instrument
that holds within it
intact delight, an edible rose.
In the heights you abandoned
the sea-urchin burr
that parted its spines
in the light of the chestnut tree;
through that slit
you glimpsed the world,
birds
bursting with syllables,
starry
dew
below,
the heads of boys
and girls,
grasses stirring restlessly,
smoke rising, rising.
You made your decision,
chestnut, and leaped to earth,
burnished and ready,
firm and smooth
as the small breasts
of the islands of America.
You fell,
you struck
the ground,
but
nothing happened,
the grass
still stirred, the old
chestnut sighed with the mouths
of a forest of trees,
a red leaf of autumn fell,
resolutely, the hours marched on
across the earth.
Because you are
only
a seed,
chestnut tree, autumn, earth,
water, heights, silence
prepared the germ,
the floury density,
the maternal eyelids
that buried will again
open toward the heights
the simple majesty of foliage,
the dark damp plan
of new roots,
the ancient but new dimensions
of another chestnut tree in the earth.
Ode To Maize by Pablo Neruda
America, from a grain
of maize you grew
to crown
with spacious lands
the ocean foam.
A grain of maize was your geography.
From the grain
a green lance rose,
was covered with gold,
to grace the heights
of Peru with its yellow tassels.
But, poet, let
history rest in its shroud;
praise with your lyre
the grain in its granaries:
sing to the simple maize in the kitchen.
First, a fine beard
fluttered in the field
above the tender teeth
of the young ear.
Then the husks parted
and fruitfulness burst its veils
of pale papyrus
that grains of laughter
might fall upon the earth.
To the stone,
in your journey,
you returned.
Not to the terrible stone,
the bloody
triangle of Mexican death,
but to the grinding stone,
sacred
stone of your kitchens.
There, milk and matter,
strength-giving, nutritious
cornmeal pulp,
you were worked and patted
by the wondrous hands
of dark-skinned women.
Wherever you fall, maize,
whether into the
splendid pot of partridge, or among
country beans, you light up
the meal and lend it
your virginal flavor.
Oh, to bite into
the steaming ear beside the sea
of distant song and deepest waltz.
To boil you
as your aroma
spreads through
blue sierras.
But is there
no end
to your treasure?
In chalky, barren lands
bordered
by the sea, along
the rocky Chilean coast,
at times
only your radiance
reaches the empty
table of the miner.
Your light, your cornmeal, your hope
pervades America's solitudes,
and to hunger
your lances
are enemy legions.
Within your husks,
like gentle kernels,
our sober provincial
children's hearts were nurtured,
until life began
to shuck us from the ear.
Ode to Tomatoes
(translated by Margaret Sayers Peden)
The street
filled with tomatoes
midday,
summer,
light is
halved
like
a
tomato,
its juice
runs
through the streets.
In December,
unabated,
the tomato
invades
the kitchen,
it enters at lunchtime,
takes
its ease
on countertops,
among glasses,
butter dishes,
blue saltcellars.
It sheds
its own light,
benign majesty.
Unfortunately, we must
murder it:
the knife
sinks
into living flesh,
red
viscera,
a cool
sun,
profound,
inexhausible,
populates the salads
of Chile,
happily, it is wed
to the clear onion,
and to celebrate the
union
we
pour
oil,
essential
child of the olive,
onto its halved
hemispheres,
pepper
adds
its fragrance,
salt, its magnetism;
it is the wedding
of the day,
parsley
hoists
its flag,
potatoes
bubble vigorously,
the aroma
of the roast
knocks
at the door,
it's time!
come on!
and, on
the table, at the midpoint
of summer,
the tomato,
star of earth,
recurrent
and fertile
star,
displays
its convolutions,
its canals,
its remarkable amplitude
and abundance,
no pit,
no husk,
no leaves or thorns,
the tomato offers
its gift
of fiery color
and cool completeness.
Ode to Olive Oil by Pablo Neruda
Near the murmuring
In the grain fields, of the
waves
Of wind in the oat-stalks
The olive tree
With its silver-covered
mass
Severe in its lines
In its twisted
Heart in the earth:
The graceful
Olives
Polished
By the hands
Which made
The dove
And the oceanic
Snail:
Green,
Innumerable,
Immaculate
Nipples
Of nature
And there
In
The dry
Olive Groves
Where
Alone
The blue sky with cicadas
And the hard earth
Exist
There
The prodigy
The perfect
Capsules
Of the olives
Filling
With their constellations,
the foliage
Then later,
The bowls,
The miracle,
The olive oil.
I love
The homelands of olive oil
The olive groves
Of Chacabuco, in Chile
In the morning
Feathers of platinum
Forests of them
Against the wrinkled
Mountain ranges.
In Anacapri, up above,
Over the light of the Italian
sea
Is the despair of olive trees
And on the map of Europe
Spain
A black basketfull of
olives
Dusted off by orange
blossoms
As if by a sea breeze
Olive oil,
The internal supreme
Condition for the cooking
pot
Pedestal for game birds
Heavenly key to
mayonnaise
Smooth and tasty
Over the lettuce
And supernatural in the
hell
Of the king mackerals like
archbishops
Our chorus
With
Intimate
Powerful smoothness
You sing:
You are the Spanish
Lnaguage
There are syllables of olive
oil
There are words
Useful and rich-smelling
Like your fragrant material
It's not only wine that sings
Olive oil sings too
It lives in us with its ripe
light
And among the good
things of the earth
I set apart
Olive oil,
Your ever-flowing peace,
your green essence
Your heaped-up treasure
which descends
In streams from the olive
tree.
Ode to Clothing by Pablo Neruda
Each morning you’re waiting
My clothing, on a chair
For me to fill you
With my vanity, my love
My hope, my body
I hardly
Have gotten out of sleep
I say goodbye to the water
I enter into your sleeves
My legs look for
The hollowness of your legs
And so embraced
By your tireless faithfulness
I go out to walk in the grass
I enter into poetry
I look through windows
At things
Men, women,
Deeds and struggles
Keep forming me
Keep coming against me
Laboring with my hands
Opening my eyes
Using up my mouth
And so,
Clothing,
I also keep forming you
Poking out your elbows
Snapping your threads
And so your life grows
Into the image of my live.
In the wind
You ripple and rustle
As if you were my soul.
In bad minutes
You stick
To my bones
Empty, through the night
Darkness, sleep
Populate with their fantasies
Your wings and mine.
I ask
If one day
A bullet
From the enemy
Might leave a spot of my blood on you
And then
You would die with me
Or maybe
It won’t all be
So dramatic
But simple
And you’ll just get feeble,
Clothing,
With me
Growing old
With me, with my body
And together
We will enter
The earth.
That’s why
Every day
I greet you
With reverence and then
You embrace me and I forget you
Because we are just one
And we’ll keep going on together
Against the wind, in the night
The streets, or the struggle
One single body
Maybe, maybe, some time will be immobile.
Ode to the Piano
by Pablo Neruda, translated by Jodey Bateman
The piano was sad
during the concert,
forgotten in its gravedigger's coat,
and then it opened its mouth,
its whale's mouth:
the pianist entered the piano
flying like a crow;
something happened as if a stone
of silver fell
or a hand
into a hidden
pond:
the sweetness slid
like rain
over a bell,
the light fell to the bottom
of a locked house,
an emerald went across the abyss
and the sea sounded,
the night,
the meadows,
the dewdrop,
the deepest thunder,
the structure of the rose sang,
the milk of dawn surrounded the
silence.
That's how the music was born
from the piano which was dying,
the garment
of the water-nymph
moved up over the coffin
and from its set of teeth
all unaware
the piano, the pianist
and the concert fell,
and everything became sound,
an elemental torrent,
a pure system, a clear bell ringing.
Then the man returned
from the tree of music.
He flew down like
a lost crow
or a crazy knight:
the piano closed its whale's mouth
and the pianist walked back from it
towards the silence.
Ode To The Thread by Pablo Neruda
This is the thread
of poetry.
Events, like sheep,
wear woolly
coats of
black
or white.
Call, and wondrous
flocks will come,
heroes and minerals,
the rose of love,
the voice of fire,
all will come to your side.
You have at your call
a mountain.
If you set out
to cross it on horseback
your beard will grow,
you will know hunger,
and on the mountain
all will be shadow.
You can’t do it that way.
You must spin it,
fly a thread
and climb it.
Infinite and pure,
it comes from many sources,
from snow,
from man;
it is strong because
it was made from ores;
it is fragile because it was
traced by trembling smoke;
the thread of poetry
is like that.
You don’t have to
tangle it again,
to return it
to time and the earth.
On the contrary,
it is your cord,
string it on your zither
and you will speak with the
mouth
of mighty mountains,
braid it,
and it will be the rigging
of a ship,
unwind it,
hang it with messages,
electrify it,
expose it
to wind and weather,
so that, straight again,
in one long line it will wind
around the world,
or thread it,
fine, oh so fine,
remembering the fairies’
gowns.
We need blankets
to warm us through the
winter.
Here come people
from the farms,
they are bringing
a hen
for the poet, one
small hen.
And what will you give them,
you, what will you give?
Now!
Now,
the thread,
the thread
that will become cloth
for those who have
only rags,
nets
for fishermen,
brilliant
scarlet
shirts
for stokers,
and a flag
for each and every one.
Through men,
through their pain
heavy as stone,
through their victories
winged like bees,
goes the thread,
through the middle
of everything that’s
happening
and all that is to come,
below the earth,
through coal;
above,
through misery,
with men,
with you,
with your people,
the thread,
the thread of poetry.
This isn’t a matter
for deliberation:
it’s an order,
I order you,
with your zither under your
arm,
come with me.
Many ears
are waiting,
an awesome
heart
lies buried,
it is our
family, our people.
The thread!
The thread!
Draw it
from the dark mountain!
To transmit lightning!
To compose the flag!
That is the thread
of poetry,
simple, sacred, electric,
fragrant and necessary,
and it doesn’t end in our
humble hands:
it is revived by the light of
each new day.
Ode to the Spoon by Pablo Neruda
Spoon,
scoop
formed
by man's
most ancient hand,
in your design
of metal or of wood
we still see
the shape
of the first
palm
to which
water
imparted
coolness
and savage
blood,
the throb
of bonfires and the hunt.
Little
spoon
in an
infant's
tiny hand,
you raise
to his mouth
the earth's
most
ancient
kiss,
silent heritage
of the first water to sing
on lips that later lay
buried beneath the sand.
To this hollow space,
detached from the palm of our hand,
someone
added
a make-believe wooden
arm,
and spoons
started turning up
all over the world
in ever
more
perfect
form,
spoons made for
moving
between bowl and ruby-red lips
or flying
from thin soups
to hungry men's careless mouths.
Yes,
spoon:
at mankind's side
you have climbed
mountains,
swept down rivers,
populated
ships and cities,
castles and kitchens:
but
the hard part
of your life's journey
is to plunge
into the poor man's plate,
and into his mouth.
And so the coming
of the new life that,
fighting and singing,
we preach,
will be a coming of soup bowls,
a perfect panoply
of spoons.
An ocean of steam rising from pots
in a world
without hunger,
and a total mobilization of spoons,
will shed light where once was darkness
shining on plates spread all over the table
like contented flowers.
Ode to Salt by Pablo Neruda
This salt
in the salt cellar
I once saw in the salt mines.
I know
you won't
believe me
but
it sings
salt sings, the skin
of the salt mines
sings
with a mouth smothered
by the earth.
I shivered in those
solitudes
when I heard
the voice
of
the salt
in the desert.
Near Antofagasta
the nitrous
pampa
resounds:
a
broken
voice,
a mournful
song.
In its caves
the salt moans, mountain
of buried light,
translucent cathedral,
crystal of the sea, oblivion
of the waves.
And then on every table
in the world,
salt,
we see your piquant
powder
sprinkling
vital light
upon
our food.
Preserver
of the ancient
holds of ships,
discoverer
on
the high seas,
earliest
sailor
of the unknown, shifting
byways of the foam.
Dust of the sea, in you
the tongue receives a kiss
from ocean night:
taste imparts to every seasoned
dish your ocean essence;
the smallest,
miniature
wave from the saltcellar
reveals to us
more than domestic whiteness;
in it, we taste finitude.
Ode to the Dictionary by Pablo Neruda
Back like an ox, beast of
burden, orderly
thick book:
as a youth
I ignored you,
wrapped in my smugness,
I thought I knew it all,
and as puffed up as a
melancholy toad
I proclaimed: "I receive
my words
in a loud, clear voice
directly from Mt. Sinai.
I shall convert
forms to alchemy.
I am the Magus"
The Great Magus said
nothing.
The Dictionary,
old and heavy in its scruffy
leather jacket
sat in silence,
its resources unrevealed
But one day,
after I'd used it
and abused it,
after
I'd called it
useless, an anachronistic
camel,
when for months, without
protest
it had served me as a chair
and a pillow,
it rebelled and planting its
feet
firmly in my doorway,
expanded, shook its leaves
and nests,
and spread its foliage:
it was
a tree,
a natural,
bountiful
apple blossom, apple
orchard, apple tree,
and words
glittered in its infinite
branches,
opaque or sonorous,
fertile in the fronds of
language,
charged with truth and
sound.
I
turn
its
pages
caporal,
capote,
what a marvel
to pronounce these plosive
syllables,
and further on,
capsule
unfilled, awaiting ambrosia
or oil
and others,
capsicum, caption, capture,
comparison, capricorn,
words
as slippery as smooth grapes,
words exploding in the light
like dormant seeds waiting
in the vaults of vocabulary,
alive again, and giving life:
once again the heart distills
them.
Dictionary, you are not a
tomb, sepulcher, grave,
tumulus, mausoleum,
but guard and keeper,
hidden fire,
groves of rubies,
living eternity
of essence,
depository of language.
How wonderful
to read in your columns
ancestral
words,
the severe and
long-forgotten
maxim,
daughter of Spain,
petrified
as a plow blade,
as limited in use
as an antiquated tool,
but preserved
in the precise beauty and
immutability of a medallion.
Or another
word
we find hiding
between the lines
that suddenly seems
as delicious and smooth on
the tongue
as an almond
or tender as a fig.
Dictionary, let one hand
of your thousand hands, one
of your thousand emeralds,
a
single
drop
of your virginal springs,
one grain
from
your
magnanimous granaries,
fall
at the perfect moment
upon my lips,
onto the tip of my pen,
into my inkwell.
From the depths of your
dense and reverberating
jungle
grant me,
at the moment it is needed,
a single birdsong, the luxury
of one bee,
one splinter
of your ancient wood
perfumed
by an eternity of jasmine,
one
syllable,
one tremor, one sound,
one seed:
I am of the earth and with
words I sing.
Ode to the Chair by Pablo Neruda
One chair, alone in the jungle.
In the vines' tight grip
a sacred tree groans.
Other vines spiral skyward,
bloodspattered creatures
howl deep within the shadows,
giant leaves drop from the green sky.
A snake shakes
the dry rattles on its tail,
a bird flashes through the foliage
like an arrow aimed at a flag
while the branches shoulder their violins.
Squatting on their flowers,
insects
pray without stirring.
Our feet sink
in
the black weeds
of the jungle sea,
in clouds fallen from the forest canopy,
and all I ask
for the foreigner,
for the despairing scout,
is a seat
in the sitting-tree,
a throne
of unkempt velvet,
the plush of an overstuffed chair
torn up by the snaking vines for the man who goes on foot,
a chair
that embraces everything,
the sound
ground and
supreme
dignity
of repose!
Get behind me, thirsty tigers
and swarms of bloodsucking flies –
behind me, black morass
of ghostly fronds,
greasy waters,
leaves the color of rust,
deathless snakes.
Bring me a chair
in the midst of
thunder,
a chair for me
and for everyone
not only
to relieve
an exhausted body but
for
every purpose
and for every person,
for squandered strength
and for meditation.
War is as vast as the shadowy jungle.
A single chair
is
the first sign
of
peace.
Ode to Wood by Pablo Neruda
Oh, of all I know
and know well,
of all things,
wood
is my best friend.
I wear through the world
on my body, in my clothing,
the scent
of the sawmill,
the odor of red wood.
My heart, my senses,
were saturated
in my childhood
with the smell of trees
that fell in great forests
filled with future building.
I heard when they scourged
the gigantic
larch,
the forty-meter laurel.
The ax and the wedge
of the tiny woodsman begin to
bite into
the haughty column;
man conquers and the
aromatic column falls,
the earth trembles, mute
thunder, a black sob
of roots, and then
a wave
of forest odors
flooded my senses.
It was in my childhood, on
distant, damp earth
in the forests of the south,
in fragrant green
archipelagoes;
I saw
roof beams born,
railroad ties
dense as iron,
slim and resonant boards.
The saw squealed,
singing
of its steely love,
the keen band whined,
the metallic lament
of the saw cutting
the loaf of the forest,
a mother in birth throes
giving birth in the midst
of the light,
of the woods,
ripping open the womb
of nature,
producing
castles of wood,
houses for man,
schools, coffins,
tables and ax handles.
Everything
in the forest
lies sleeping
beneath moist leaves,
then
a man
begins
driving in the wedge
and hefting the ax
to hack at the pure
solemnity of the tree,
and the tree
falls,
thunder and fragrance fall
so that from them will be born
structures, forms,
buildings,
from the hands of the man.
I know you, I love you,
I saw you born, wood.
That's why
when I touch you
you respond
like a lover,
you show me
your eyes and your grain,
your knots, your blemishes,
your veins
like frozen rivers.
I know
the song
they sang
on the voice of the wind,
I hear
a stormy night,
the galloping
of a horse through deep woods,
I touch you and you open
like a faded rose
that revives for me alone,
offering
an aroma and fire
that had seemed dead.
Beneath
sordid paint
I divine your pores,
choked, you call to me
and I hear you,
I feel
the shuddering
of trees that shaded
and amazed my childhood,
I see
emerge from you
like a soaring wave
28
or dove
wings of books,
tomorrow s
paper
for man,
pure paper for the pure man
who will live tomorrow
and who today is being born
to the sound of a saw,
to a tearing
of light, sound, and blood.
In the sawmill
of time
dark forests fall,
dark
is born
man,
black leaves fall,
and thunder threatens,
death and life
speak at once
and like a violin rises
the song, the lament,
of the saw in the forest,
and so wood is born
and begins to travel the
world,
until becoming a silent builder
cut and pierced by steel,
until it suffers and protects,
building
the dwelling
where every day
man, wife, and life
will come together.
Ode to Laziness by Pablo Neruda
Yesterday I felt this ode
would not get off the floor.
It was time, I ought
at least
show a green leaf.
I scratch the earth: “Arise,
sister ode
—said to her—
I have promised you,
do not be afraid of me,
I am not going to crush you,
four-leaf ode,
four-hand ode,
you shall have tea with me.
Arise,
I am going to crown you among the
odes,
we shall go out together along the
shores
of the sea, on a bicycle.”
It was no use.
Then,
on the pine peaks,
laziness
appeared in the nude,
she led me dazzled
and sleepy,
she showed me upon the sand
small broken bits
of ocean substance,
wood, algae, pebbles,
feathers of sea birds.
I looked for but did not find
yellow agates.
The sea
filled all spaces
crumbling towers,
invading
successive catastrophes of the foam.
Alone on the sand
spread wide
its corolla.
I saw the silvery petrels crossing
and like black creases
the cormorants
nailed to the rocks.
I released a bee
that was agonizing in a spider’s nest.
I put a little pebble
in my pocket,
it was smooth, very smooth
as the breast of a bird,
meanwhile on the shore,
all afternoon
sun struggled with mist.
At times
the mist was steeped
in thought,
topaz-like,
at others fell
a ray from the moist sun
distilling yellow drops.
At night,
thinking of the duties of my fugitive
ode,
I pull off my shoes
near the fire;
sand slid out of them
and soon I began to fall
asleep.
Ode to the Bee
Pablo Neruda
Plentiness of the bee!
Coming and going
from orange, blue and yellow
from the softest softness of the world she hastily enters on business the flower
crown
and exits with golden coat and yellow
boots.
Perfect with a waist of lines of dark bands
with tiny always busy head and watery
wings
she enters scented windows, opens silken
doors
enters the sanctum of the most fragrant
love,
stumbles over small droplets of diamond
dew
and from all visited houses she takes
mysterious honey,
rich and heavy, of dense fragrance
and liquid light that falls down in drops
until she reaches the bee palace
and deposes the product of the flower, of
the flight
and of the seraphic, secret sun.
Plentiness of the bee!
Sacred elevation of the unity,
palpitating school!
Sonorous buzzing multitudes that tune
the nectar
passing swiftly drops of ambrosia it is the siesta of the summer of green and
of the solitudes of Osorno.
Above the sun stitches his lances in the
snow, lighting the volcanoes
wide as the oceans is the earth, blue is
the space
but there is something trembling,
it is the burning heart of the summer
the heart of multiplied honey,
the noisy bee in the living comb of golden
flights.
Bees, pure selfless workers,
thin, flashing proletarians, perfect
fearsome militia
that in war attack with suicidal stings
buzz, buzz over the earth’s realms
family of gold, windy multitudes
shake the fire of the flowers
the thirst of the stamens
the sharp thread of fragrances
that unite the days and make the honey
surpassing the wet continents
and the farthest islands of the sky of the
West
Yes:
Let the wax raise green statues
let the honey overflow in infinite tongues
let the ocean be a comb
and the Earth be a tower and tunic of
flowers
Let the world be a cascade,
magnificent head of hair,
unceasing growth of Beedom!
Ode to Bicycles by Pablo Neruda
I was walking
down
a sizzling road:
the sun popped like
a field of blazing maize,
the
earth
was hot,
an infinite circle
with an empty
blue sky overhead.
A few bicycles
passed
me by,
the only
insects
in
that dry
moment of summer,
silent,
swift,
translucent;
they
barely stirred
the air.
Workers and girls
were riding to their
factories,
giving
their eyes
to summer,
their heads to the sky,
sitting on the
hard
beetle backs
of the whirling
bicycles
that whirred
as they rode by
bridges, rosebushes, brambles
and midday.
I thought about evening when
the boys
wash up,
sing, eat, raise
a cup
of wine
in honor
of love
and life,
and waiting
at the door,
the bicycle,
stilled,
because
only moving
does it have a soul,
and fallen there
it isn't
a translucent insect
humming
through summer
but
a cold
skeleton
that will return to
life
only
when it's needed,
when it's light,
that is,
with
the
resurrection
of each day.
Ode to the Numbers
by Pablo Neruda
Such thirst
to know how much!
Such hunger
to know
how many stars in the sky!
We pass
our infancies
counting stones, plants,
fingers, sand grains, teeth,
pass our youths counting
petals, hairs.
We count
the color and the years,
the lives and kisses,
bulls
in the fields, waves
in the sea. The ships
made ciphers which multiplied.
The numbers spawned.
The cities
were thousands, millions,
and the wheat came in hundreds
of units
each holding other integers
tinier than a single grain.
Time became a number.
Light became numbered
and however much it raced with sound
it had a velocity of 37.
Numbers surround us,
At night we would
lock the door, exhausted,
approaching 800;
below
having come to bed with us
in that sleep
the 4,000 and the 77
goaded our foreheads
with their wrenches and hammers.
The 5
would compound itself
until it entered the sea or the delirium
where the sun might greet it with steel
and we co racing
to the office,
the mill,
the factory,
to start fresh with the infinite
number 1 of each day.
Friend, we had the time
so our thirst could be satisfied,
the ancestral longing
to enumerate things
and total them,
reducing them
until rendering them dust,
dunes of numbers.
We are papering
the world
with figures and ciphers,
but
the things existed
nonetheless, fleeing
all tallies,
becoming dehydrated
by such quantities, leaving
their fragrance and memories,
and the empty numbers remained.
For that reason,
for you
I love the things.
The numbers
which go to jail,
move
in closed columns
procreating
until they give us the sum
for the whole of infinity.
For your sake I want
some
numbers of the way
to defend you
and you to defend them.
May your weekly wages increase
and grow chest-deep!
And out of the number 2 that binds
your body and your beloved wife's
emerge the matches eyes of your sons
to tally yet again
the ancient stars
and innumerable
spikes of wheat
which shall fulfill the transfigured earth.
Ode to the Hummingbird by Pablo Neruda
The hummingbird
in flight
is a water-spark,
an incandescent drip
of American
fire,
the jungle's
flaming resume,
a heavenly,
precise
rainbow:
the hummingbird is
an arc,
a golden
thread,
a green
bonfire!
Oh
tiny
living
lightning,
when
you hover
in the air,
you are
a body of pollen,
a feather
or hot coal,
I ask you:
What is your substance?
Perhaps during the blind age
of the Deluge,
within fertility's
mud,
when the rose
crystallized
in an anthracite fist,
and metals matriculated
each one in
a secret gallery
perhaps then
from a wounded reptile
some fragment rolled,
a golden atom,
the last cosmic scale,
a drop of terrestrial fire
took flight,
suspending your splendor,
your iridescent,
swift sapphire.
You doze
on a nut,
fit into a diminutive blossom;
you are an arrow,
a pattern,
a coat-of-arms,
honey's vibrato, pollen's ray;
you are so stouthearted-the falcon
with his black plumage
does not daunt you:
you pirouette,
a light within the light,
air within the air.
Wrapped in your wings,
you penetrate the sheath
of a quivering flower,
not fearing
that her nuptial honey
may take off your head!
From scarlet to dusty gold,
to yellow flames,
to the rare
ashen emerald,
to the orange and black velvet
of our girdle gilded by sunflowers,
to the sketch
like
amber thorns,
your Epiphany,
little supreme being,
you are a miracle,
shimmering
from torrid California
to Patagonia's whistling,
bitter wind.
You are a sun-seed,
plumed
fire,
a miniature
flag
in flight,
a petal ofsilenced nations,
a syllable
of buried blood,
a feather
of an ancient heart,
submerged.
Ode to the Book by Pablo Neruda
When I close a book
I open life.
I hear
faltering cries
among harbours.
Copper ignots
slide down sand-pits
to Tocopilla.
Night time.
Among the islands
our ocean
throbs with fish,
touches the feet, the thighs,
the chalk ribs
of my country.
The whole of night
clings to its shores, by dawn
it wakes up singing
as if it had excited a guitar.
The ocean's surge is calling.
The wind
calls me
and Rodriguez calls,
and Jose Antonio-I got a telegram
from the "Mine" Union
and the one I love
(whose name I won't let out)
expects me in Bucalemu.
No book has been able
to wrap me in paper,
to fill me up
with typography,
with heavenly imprints
or was ever able
to bind my eyes,
I come out of books to people orchards
with the hoarse family of my song,
to work the burning metals
or to eat smoked beef
by mountain firesides.
I love adventurous
books,
books of forest or snow,
depth or sky
but hate
the spider book
in which thought
has laid poisonous wires
to trap the juvenile
and circling fly.
Book, let me go.
I won't go clothed
in volumes,
I don't come out
of collected works,
my poems
have not eaten poems-they devour
exciting happenings,
feed on rough weather,
and dig their food
out of earth and men.
I'm on my way
with dust in my shoes
free of mythology:
send books back to their shelves,
I'm going down into the streets.
I learned about life
from life itself,
love I learned in a single kiss
and could teach no one anything
except that I have lived
with something in common among men,
when fighting with them,
when saying all their say in my song.
Ode to the Table by Pablo Neruda
I work out my odes
on a four-legged table,
laying before me bread and wine
and roast meat
(that black boat
of our dreams).
Sometimes I set our scissors, cups and
nails,
hammers and carnations.
Tables are trustworthy:
titanic quadrupeds,
they sustain
our hopes and our daily life.
The rich man’s table,
scrolled and shining,
is
a fabulous ship
bearing bunches of fruit.
Gluttony’s table is a wonder,
piled high with Gothic lobsters,
and there is also a lonesome
table in our aunt’s dining room,
in summer. They’ve closed
the curtains,
and a single ray of summer light
strikes like a sword
upon this table sitting in the dark
and greets the plums’ transparent peace.
And there is a faraway table, a humble
table,
where they’re weaving
a wreath
for
a dead miner.
That table gives off the chilling odor
of a man’s wasted pain.
There’s a table
in a shadowy room nearby
that love sets ablaze with its flames.
A woman’s glove was left behind there,
trembling like a husk on fire.
The world
is a table
engulfed in honey and smoke,
smothered by apples and blood.
The table is already set,
and we know the truth
as soon as we are called:
whether we’re called to war or to dinner
we will have to choose sides,
have to know
how we’ll dress
to sit
at the long table,
whether we’ll wear the pants of hate
or the shirt of love, freshly laundered.
It’s time to decide,
they're calling:
boys and girls,
let’s eat!
Ode to the Guitar by Pablo Neruda
Slender,
perfect profile
of a musical heart,
you are clarity itself captured in flight.
Through song you endure:
your shape alone will never pass away.
Is it the harsh grief
that pours out to you,
your thrumming beats, or the
buzzing of wings:
is that what I’ll recall?
Or are you
more thoroughly thrilling
in silence,
the dove schematized
or a woman’s hip,
a pattern that emerges
from its foam
and reappears: a turgid, tumbled
and resurrected rose.
Beneath a fig tree,
by the rough-running river Bio-Bio,
you left your nest like a bird,
guitar,
and delivered
to swarthy
hands
those long-lost trysts,
muffled sobs,
and endless successions of farewells.
Song poured out of you,
a marriage
between man
and guitar,
forgotten kisses
from an unforgettable, unforgiving lady.
In this way the entire night
became
the star-studded body
of a guitar.
The firmament trembled
in its musical canopy,
while the river
tuned
its infinite strings,
sweeping toward the sea
a pure tide
of scents and sorrows.
O rich solitude,
that arrives with the night,
solitude like the bread made of earth,
solitude sung by a river of guitars!
The world shrinks
to a single drop
of honey, or one star,
and through the leaves everything is blue:
trembling, all of heaven
sings.
And the woman who plays
both earth and guitar
bears in her voice
the mourning
and the joy
of the most poignant moment.
Time and distance
fall away from the guitar.
We are a dream,
an unfinished
song.
The untamed heart
rides back roads on horseback:
over and over again it dreams of the night, of
silence,
over and over again it sings of the earth, or its guitar.
Ode to a Violin in California by Pablo Neruda
One day I fell like a stone
upon the California
coast, on my own and out of
luck.
Morning came, a yellow
whiplash,
and evening a gust of wind.
Night came
like an immaculate bowl
overflowing with stars and
newness.
O pregnant
sky, blue sculpture’s
breast trembling
above Mexico’s borders,
and on the shore
alone there with
only the wayfarer’s sadness,
a withered stick all along,
wrung out and blistered,
washed up
on California’s sinister salt shore
by the tide’s whim.
Suddenly the voice of a violin,
thin
and hungry,
floated
on the evening air
like a stray dog’s
howling.
It mourned for me, it sought me
out:
it was
my companion,
it was mankind howling,
it was someone else’s loneliness
loose upon the sand.
I sought that violin in the night.
I searched street by pitch-black
street,
went house by weathered
house,
star by star.
It faded
and fell silent
then suddenly surged
a flare
in the brackish night.
It was a pattern of incendiary
sound,
a spiral of musical contours,
and I went on searching
street by street
for the dark violin’s
lifeline,
the source submerged in
silence.
Finally, there
he was,
at the entrance to a bar:
a man and his
hungry violin.
The last drunk
weaved homeward
to a bunk on board a ship,
and violated tables
shrugged off empty glasses.
Nobody was left waiting,
And nobody was on the way.
The wine had left for home,
the beer was sound asleep,
and in the doorway
soared
the violin with its ragged
companion,
it soared
over the lonely night,
on a solitary scale
sounding of silver and
complaint,
a single theme that wrung
from the sky
wandering fire, comets, and
troubadors,
and I played my violin
half asleep,
held fast in the estuary’s
mouth, the strings
giving birth to those desolate
cries,
the wood worn smooth
by the plunging of many fingers.
I honored the smoothness, the
feel
of a perfect instrument,
perfectly assembled.
That hungry man’s violin
was like family to me,
like kin,
and not just because of its
sound,
not just because it raised
its howling
to the angry stars,
no: because it had grown up
learning
how to befriend lost souls
and sing songs to wandering
strangers.
Ode to the Dog by Pablo Neruda
The dog is asking me a question
and I have no answer.
He dashes through the countryside and asks me
Wordlessly,
and his eyes
are two moist question marks, two wet
inquiring flames,
but I do not answer
because I haven’t got the answer.
I have nothing to say.
Dog and man: together we roam
the open countryside.
Leaves shine as
if someone
had kissed them
one by one,
orange trees
rise up from the earth
raising
minute planetariums
in trees that are as rounded
and green as the night,
while we roam together, dog and man
sniffing everything, jostling clover
in the countryside of Chile,
cradled by the bright fingers of September.
The dog makes stops,
chases bees,
leaps over restless water,
listens to far-off
barking,
pees on a rock,
and presents me the tip of his snout
as if it were a gift:
it is the freshness of his love,
his message of love.
And he asks me
with both eyes:
why is it daytime? why does night always fall?
why does spring bring
nothing
in its basket
for wandering dogs
but useless flowers,
flowers and more flowers?
This is how the dog
asks questions
and I do not reply.
Together we roam,
man and dog bound together again
by the bright green morning,
by the provocative empty solitude
in which we alone
exist,
this union of dog and dew
or poet and woods.
For these two companions,
for these fellow-hunters,
there is no lurking fowl
or secret berry
but only birdsong and sweet smells,
a world moistened
by night’s distillations,
a green tunnel and then
a meadow,
a gust of orangey air,
the murmurings of roots,
life on the move,
breathing and growing,
and the ancient friendship,
the joy
of being dog or being man
fused
in a single beast
that pads along on
six feet,
wagging
its dew-wet tail.
Ode To The Gillyflower by Pablo Neruda
I was buried in paper,
a sinister consumer
of books good and bad,
and as soon as I arrived at the
Island,
at the ocean sun and salt,
I yanked
the gillyflowers
out of my little garden.
I threw them in the ditch
and ranted away at them,
justifying
my odd passion for
sea plants and thorns
crowned
with bolts of purple lightning.
That’s how I planted
my garden in the sand.
I denounced as suburban
the gillyflower’s
fragrance that the breeze
scattered there on invisible
fingers.
Today I’m back
after long
months away,
months like centuries or years
of darkness, bright lights, and
blood.
I’m back to plant
gillyflowers
on the Island.
You bashful flowers,
little more than
fragrant light,
you perfect protagonists
of silence:
I love you
now
after stumbling
around
this wide world
because
I’ve learned a thing or two
about
clarity,
and
because when I tripped and
banged
my head, a
purple
radiance
greeted me,
a white ray
and a clean shawl’s boundless
aroma.
The humble gillyflowers
were waiting for me there
with their faithful scent and
their abandoned snow.
They wrapped
my head
in familiar stars and hands.
I knew
that provincial
scent:
I experienced that intimate
fragrance again.
Forgive me,
my beloved, neglected
gillyflowers.
Your heavenly blossoms
grow
again
in my sandy garden,
impregnating
my heart
with loving scents.
A crystal-clear ocean breeze
showers
drops of blue salt,
ocean snow,
on the fading day.
Everything is bright again!
I see
that the world
is
suddenly
simpler,
as if
filled
with gillyflowers.
The earth
is
ready.
A new day
full of gillyflowers
begins, in simplicity.
Ode to a Pair of Scissors by Pablo Neruda
Prodigious
scissors
(looking like
birds, or
fish),
you are as polished as a knight’s
shining armor.
Two long and treacherous
knives
crossed and bound together
for all time,
two
tiny rivers
joined:
thus was born a creature for
cutting,
a fish that swims among
billowing linens,
a bird that flies
through barbershops.
Scissors
that smell
of
my seamstress
aunt’s
hands
when their vacant
metal eye
spied on
our
cramped
childhood,
tattling
to the neighbors
about our thefts of plums and
kisses.
There,
in the house,
nestled in their corner,
the scissors crossed
our lives,
and oh so
many lengths of
fabric
that they cut and kept on
cutting:
for newlyweds and the dead,
for newborns and hospital
wards.
They cut
and kept on cutting,
also the peasant’s
hair
as tough
as a plant that clings to a rock,
and flags
soon
stained and scorched
by blood and flame,
and vine
stalks in winter,
and the cord
of
voices
on the telephone.
A long-lost pair of scissors
cut your mother’s
thread
from your navel
and handed you for all time
your separate existence.
Another pair, not necessarily
somber,
will one day cut
the suit you wear to your grave.
Scissors
have gone
everywhere,
they’ve explored
the world
snipping off pieces of
happiness
and sadness
indifferently.
Everything has been material
for scissors to shape:
the tailor’s
giant
scissors,
as lovely as schooners,
and very small ones
for trimming nails
in the shape of the waning
moon,
and the surgeon’s
slender
submarine scissors
that cut the complications
and the knot that should not
have grown inside you.
Now, I’ll cut this ode short
with the scissors
of good sense,
so that it won’t be too long or
too short,
so that it
will
fit in your pocket
smoothed and folded
like
a pair
of scissors.
Ode to a Box of Tea by Pablo Neruda
Box of tea
from
elephant country,
now a worn
sewing box,
small planetarium of buttons:
you brought
into the house
a sacred,
unplaceable scent,
as if you had come from another planet.
With you my weary young heart
arrived from far-off places,
returning
from the islands.
I had lain sweating
with fever
by the ocean shore, while a
palm frond
waved back and forth above me,
soothing
my emotions
with its green air and song.
Exquisite
tin box,
oh
how you remind me of
the swell of other seas,
the roar
of
monsoons over Asia
when
countries
rock
like ships
at the hands of the wind
and Ceylon scatters
its scents
like a head of
storm-tossed
hair.
Box of tea,
like my
own heart
you arrived bearing
stories,
thrills,
eyes
that had held
fabulous petals in their gaze
and also, yes,
that
lost scent
of tea, of jasmine and of dreams,
that scent of wandering spring.
Ode to the Plate by Pablo Neruda
Plate,
world's
most vital disk,
planet and planetarium:
at noon, when
the sun, itself a plate of fire,
crowns
the
height
of day,
your stars
appear, plate,
upon
the tables of the world,
constellations
in abundance,
and the world
fills with food, and the universe
fills with fragrance,
until work
reclaims
the workers,
and once again
the dining car is empty,
while the plates return
to the depths of the kitchen.
Smooth, perfect vessel,
you were spawned by a spring on a stone.
Then the human hand
duplicated
that perfect hollow
and the potter copied its freshness
so that
time with its thread
could insert it
forever
between every man and his life:
one plate, two plates, three . . .
ceramic hope,
sacred bowl,
moonlight precise within its halo,
rounded beauty of a diadem.
Ode to Meaning
by Robert Pinksy
Dire one and desired one,
Savior, sentencer-In an old allegory you would carry
A chained alphabet of tokens:
In the cellular flesh of a stone.
Gas. Gossamer. My poker friends
Question your presence
In a poem by me, passing the magazine
One to another.
Ankh Badge Cross.
Dragon,
Engraved figure guarding a hallowed intaglio,
Jasper kinema of legendary Mind,
Naked omphalos pierced
By quills of rhyme or sense, torah-like: unborn
Vein of will, xenophile
Yearning out of Zero.
Not the stone and not the words, you
Like a veil over Arthur's headstone,
The passage from Proverbs he chose
While he was too ill to teach
And still well enough to read, I was
Beside the master craftsman
Delighting him day after day, ever
At play in his presence--you
Untrusting I court you. Wavering
I seek your face, I read
That Crusoe's knife
Reeked of you, that to defile you
The soldier makes the rabbi spit on the torah.
"I'll drown my book" says Shakespeare.
A soothing veil of distraction playing over
Dying Arthur playing in the hospital,
Thumbing the Bible, fuzzy from medication,
Ever courting your presence,
And you the prognosis,
You in the cough.
Drowned walker, revenant.
After my mother fell on her head, she became
More than ever your sworn enemy. She spoke
Sometimes like a poet or critic of forty years later.
Or she spoke of the world as Thersites spoke of the
heroes,
"I think they have swallowed one another. I
Would laugh at that miracle."
Gesturer, when is your spur, your cloud?
You in the airport rituals of greeting and parting.
Indicter, who is your claimant?
Bell at the gate. Spiderweb iron bridge.
Cloak, video, aroma, rue, what is your
Elected silence, where was your seed?
You also in the laughter, warrior angel:
Your helmet the zodiac, rocket-plumed
Your spear the beggar's finger pointing to the mouth
Your heel planted on the serpent Formulation
Your face a vapor, the wreath of cigarette smoke
crowning
Bogart as he winces through it.
You not in the words, not even
Between the words, but a torsion,
A cleavage, a stirring.
You stirring even in the arctic ice,
Even at the dark ocean floor, even
What is Imagination
But your lost child born to give birth to you?
Dire one. Desired one.
Savior, sentencer-Absence,
Or presence ever at play:
Let those scorn you who never
Starved in your dearth. If I
Dare to disparage
Your harp of shadows I taste
Wormwood and motor oil, I pour
Ashes on my head. You are the wound. You
Be the medicine.
Shirt
By Robert Pinsky
The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams,
The nearly invisible stitches along the collar
Turned in a sweatshop by Koreans or Malaysians
Like Hart Crane's Bedlamite, "shrill shirt ballooning."
Wonderful how the patern matches perfectly
Across the placket and over the twin bar-tacked
Gossiping over tea and noodles on their break
Or talking money or politics while one fitted
This armpiece with its overseam to the band
Corners of both pockets, like a strict rhyme
Or a major chord. Prints, plaids, checks,
Houndstooth, Tattersall, Madras. The clan tartans
Of cuff I button at my wrist. The presser, the cutter,
The wringer, the mangle. The needle, the union,
The treadle, the bobbin. The code. The infamous
blaze
Invented by mill-owners inspired by the hoax of
Ossian,
To control their savage Scottish workers, tamed
By a fabricated heraldry: MacGregor,
At the Triangle Factory in nineteen-eleven.
One hundred and forty-six died in the flames
On the ninth floor, no hydrants, no fire escapes—
Bailey, MacMartin. The kilt, devised for workers
to wear among the dusty clattering looms.
Weavers, carders, spinners. The loader,
The witness in a building across the street
Who watched how a young man helped a girl to step
Up to the windowsill, then held her out
The docker, the navvy. The planter, the picker, the
sorter
Sweating at her machine in a litter of cotton
As slaves in calico headrags sweated in fields:
Away from the masonry wall and let her drop.
And then another. As if he were helping them up
To enter a streetcar, and not eternity.
A third before he dropped her put her arms
Around his neck and kissed him. Then he held
Her into space, and dropped her. Almost at once
He stepped up to the sill himself, his jacket flared
And fluttered up from his shirt as he came down,
Air filling up the legs of his gray trousers—
George Herbert, your descendant is a Black
Lady in South Carolina, her name is Irma
And she inspected my shirt. Its color and fit
And feel and its clean smell have satisfied
both her and me. We have culled its cost and quality
Down to the buttons of simulated bone,
The buttonholes, the sizing, the facing, the
characters
Printed in black on neckband and tail. The shape,
The label, the labor, the color, the shade. The shirt.
Ode to the Watermelon
by Pablo Neruda
The tree of intense
summer,
hard,
is all blue sky,
yellow sun, fatigue in drops,
a sword
above the highways,
a scorched shoe
in the cities:
the brightness and the world
weigh us down,
hit us
in the eyes
with clouds of dust,
with sudden golden blows,
they torture
our feet
with tiny thorns,
with hot stones,
and the mouth
suffers
more than all the toes:
the throat
becomes thirsty,
the teeth,
the lips, the tongue:
we want to drink
waterfalls,
the dark blue night,
the South Pole,
and then
the coolest of all
the planets crosses
the sky,
the round, magnificent,
star-filled watermelon.
It's a fruit from the thirst-tree.
It's the green whale of the summer.
The dry universe
all at once
given dark stars
by this firmament of coolness
lets the swelling
fruit
come down:
its hemispheres open
showing a flag
green, white, red,
that dissolves into
wild rivers, sugar,
delight!
Jewel box of water, phlegmatic
queen
of the fruitshops,
warehouse
of profundity, moon
on earth!
You are pure,
rubies fall apart
in your abundance,
and we
want
to bite into you,
to bury our
face
in you, and
our hair, and
the soul!
When we're thirsty
we glimpse you
like
a mine or a mountain
of fantastic food,
but
among our longings and our teeth
you change
simply
into cool light
that slips in turn into
spring water
that touched us once
singing.
And that is why
you don't weigh us down
in the siesta hour
that's like an oven,
you don't weigh us down,
you just
go by
and your heart, some cold ember,
turned itself into a single
drop of water.
--trans. Robert Bly
Ode to the Present by Pablo Neruda
This
braid its
present moment,
back;
smooth
test it.
as a wooden slab,
Or then, build
this
a staircase!
immaculate hour,
this day
Yes, a
pure
staircase.
as a new cup
Climb
from the past--
into
no spider web
the present,
exists--
step
with our fingers,
by step,
we caress
press your feet
the present;
onto the resinous wood
of this moment,
we cut it
going up,
according to our magnitude
going up,
we guide
not very high,
the unfolding of its blossoms.
just so
It is living,
you repair
alive--
the leaky roof.
it contains
Don't go all the way to heaven.
nothing
Reach
from the unrepairable past,
for apples,
from the lost past,
not the clouds.
it is our
Let them
infant,
fluff through the sky,
growing at
skimming passage,
this very moment, adorned with
into the past.
sand, eating from
our hands.
You
Grab it.
are
Don't let it slip away.
your present,
Don't lose it in dreams
your own apple.
or words.
Pick it from
Clutch it.
your tree.
Tie it,
Raise it
and order it
in your hand.
to obey you.
It's gleaming,
Make it a road,
rich with stars.
a bell,
Claim it.
a machine,
Take a luxurious bite
a kiss, a book,
out of the present,
a caress.
and whistle along the road
Take a saw to its delicious
of your destiny.
wooden
perfume.
And make a chair;
Federico Garcia Lorca - Ode to Walt Whitman
By the East River and the Bronx
boys were singing, exposing their waists
with the wheel, with oil, leather, and the hammer.
Ninety thousand miners taking silver from the rocks
and children drawing stairs and perspectives.
But none of them could sleep,
none of them wanted to be the river,
none of them loved the huge leaves
or the shoreline's blue tongue.
By the East River and the Queensboro
boys were battling with industry
and the Jews sold to the river faun
the rose of circumcision,
and over bridges and rooftops, the mouth of the sky emptied
herds of bison driven by the wind.
But none of them paused,
none of them wanted to be a cloud,
none of them looked for ferns
or the yellow wheel of a tambourine.
As soon as the moon rises
the pulleys will spin to alter the sky;
a border of needles will besiege memory
and the coffins will bear away those who don't work.
New York, mire,
New York, mire and death.
What angel is hidden in your cheek?
Whose perfect voice will sing the truths of wheat?
Who, the terrible dream of your stained anemones?
Not for a moment, Walt Whitman, lovely old man,
have I failed to see your beard full of butterflies,
nor your corduroy shoulders frayed by the moon,
nor your thighs pure as Apollo's,
nor your voice like a column of ash,
old man, beautiful as the mist,
you moaned like a bird
with its sex pierced by a needle.
Enemy of the satyr,
enemy of the vine,
and lover of bodies beneath rough cloth...
Not for a moment, virile beauty,
who among mountains of coal, billboards, and railroads,
dreamed of becoming a river and sleeping like a river
with that comrade who would place in your breast
the small ache of an ignorant leopard.
Not for a moment, Adam of blood, Macho,
man alone at sea, Walt Whitman, lovely old man,
because on penthouse roofs,
gathered at bars,
emerging in bunches from the sewers,
trembling between the legs of chauffeurs,
or spinning on dance floors wet with absinthe,
the faggots, Walt Whitman, point you out.
He's one, too! That's right! And they land
on your luminous chaste beard,
blonds from the north, blacks from the sands,
crowds of howls and gestures,
like cats or like snakes,
the faggots, Walt Whitman, the faggots,
clouded with tears, flesh for the whip,
the boot, or the teeth of the lion tamers.
He's one, too! That's right! Stained fingers
point to the shore of your dream
when a friend eats your apple
with a slight taste of gasoline
and the sun sings in the navels
of boys who play under bridges.
But you didn't look for scratched eyes,
nor the darkest swamp where someone submerges children,
nor frozen saliva,
nor the curves slit open like a toad's belly
that the faggots wear in cars and on terraces
while the moon lashes them on the street corners of terror.
You looked for a naked body like a river.
Bull and dream who would join wheel with seaweed,
father of your agony, camellia of your death,
who would groan in the blaze of your hidden equator.
Because it's all right if a man doesn't look for his delight
in tomorrow morning's jungle of blood.
The sky has shores where life is avoided
and there are bodies that shouldn't repeat themselves in the dawn.
Agony, agony, dream, ferment, and dream.
This is the world, my friend, agony, agony.
Bodies decompose beneath the city clocks,
war passes by in tears, followed by a million gray rats,
the rich give their mistresses
small illuminated dying things,
and life is neither noble, nor good, nor sacred.
Man is able, if he wishes, to guide his desire
through a vein of coral or a heavenly naked body.
Tomorrow, loves will become stones, and Time
a breeze that drowses in the branches.
That's why I don't raise my voice, old Walt Whitman,
against the little boy who writes
the name of a girl on his pillow,
nor against the boy who dresses as a bride
in the darkness of the wardrobe,
nor against the solitary men in casinos
who drink prostitution's water with revulsion,
nor against the men with that green look in their eyes
who love other men and burn their lips in silence.
But yes against you, urban faggots,
tumescent flesh and unclean thoughts.
Mothers of mud. Harpies. Sleepless enemies
of the love that bestows crowns of joy.
Always against you, who give boys
drops of foul death with bitter poison.
Always against you,
Fairies of North America,
Pájaros of Havana,
Jotos of Mexico,
Sarasas of Cádiz,
Apios of Seville,
Cancos of Madrid,
Floras of Alicante,
Adelaidas of Portugal.
Faggots of the world, murderers of doves!
Slaves of women. Their bedroom bitches.
Opening in public squares like feverish fans
or ambushed in rigid hemlock landscapes.
No quarter given! Death
spills from your eyes
and gathers gray flowers at the mire's edge.
No quarter given! Attention!
Let the confused, the pure,
the classical, the celebrated, the supplicants
close the doors of the bacchanal to you.
And you, lovely Walt Whitman, stay asleep on the Hudson's banks
with your beard toward the pole, openhanded.
Soft clay or snow, your tongue calls for
comrades to keep watch over your unbodied gazelle.
Sleep on, nothing remains.
Dancing walls stir the prairies
and America drowns itself in machinery and lament.
I want the powerful air from the deepest night
to blow away flowers and inscriptions from the arch where you sleep,
and a black child to inform the gold-craving whites
that the kingdom of grain has arrived.
A child said, What is the grass?
by
Walt Whitman
A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full
hands;
How could I answer the child?. . . .I do not know what it
is any more than he.
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful
green stuff woven.
Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped,
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we
may see and remark, and say Whose?
Or I guess the grass is itself a child. . . .the produced babe
of the vegetation.
Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow
zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the
same, I receive them the same.
And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.
Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them;
It may be you are from old people and from women, and
from offspring taken soon out of their mother's laps,
And here you are the mother's laps.
This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old
mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.
O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues!
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths
for nothing.
I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men
and women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring
taken soon out of their laps.
What do you think has become of the young and old men?
What do you think has become of the women and
children?
They are alive and well somewhere;
The smallest sprouts show there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait
at the end to arrest it,
And ceased the moment life appeared.
All goes onward and outward. . . .and nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and
luckier.
Ode to the Air
By Pablo Neruda
Walking down a path
I met the air,
saluted it and said
respectfully:
“It makes me happy
that for once
you left your transparency,
let’s talk.”
He tirelessly
danced, moved leaves,
beat the dust
from my soles
with his laughter,
and lifting all
his blue rigging,
his skeleton of glass,
his eyelids’ breeze,
immobile as a mast
he stood listening to me.
I kissed the cape
of heaven’s king,
I wrapped myself
in his flag of sky
blue silk
and said:
king and comrade,
needle, corolla, bird,
I don’t know who you are but
I ask one thing –
don’t sell yourself.
The water sold itself
and from the desert’s
distilleries
I’ve seen
the last drops
terminate
and the poor world, the people
walking with their thirst
staggering in the sand.
I saw the light
at night
rationed,
the great light in the house
of the rich.
All is dawn in the
new hanging gardens,
all is dark
in the terrible
shadow of the valley.
From there, the night,
mother step mother,
goes out with a dagger in the
midst
of her owl’s eyes,
and a scream, a crime,
arises and extinguishes,
swallowed by shadow.
No, air,
don’t sell yourself,
don’t be channeled,
don’t be entubed,
don’t be boxed,
compressed,
don’t be stamped out in pills,
don’t be bottled,
be careful!
Call
when you need me,
I am the poet son
of the poor, brother
in flesh and brother
in law
of the poor, of everywhere,
of my country and all the others,
of the poor who live on the
river,
of those who live in the heights
of the vertical mountains,
break rock,
nail boards,
sew clothes,
cut wood,
haul earth,
and for this
I want them to breathe,
you are all they have,
this is why
you are
invisible,
so they can see
what tomorrow brings,
for this
you exist,
air,
catch your breath,
don’t shackle yourself,
don’t fix yourself to anyone
who comes in a car
to examine you,
leave them,
laugh at them,
flee from them through the
shadows,
don’t accept
their propositions,
we’ll go together
dancing through the world,
knocking the blossoms
from the apple trees,
entering windows,
whistling
melodies
from yesterday and tomorrow,
already
the day is coming
when we will liberate
the light and the water,
earth and men,
and all will be
for all, as you are.
For this, for now,
be careful!
And come with me,
much remains
that dances and sings,
let’s go
the length of the sea,
to the height of the mountains,
let’s go
where the new spring
is flowering
and in one gust of wind
and song
we’ll share the flowers,
the scent, the fruit,
the air
of tomorrow.
Ode to the Sea
By Pablo Neruda trans. by Linh Dinh
Here on the island
the sea
and so much sea
overflowing,
relentless,
it says yes, then no,
then no, no, no,
then yes, in blue,
in foam, with gallops,
it says no, again no.
It cannot stay still,
my name is sea, it repeats
while slamming against rocks
but unable to convince rocks,
then
with seven green tongues
of seven green dogs,
of seven green tigers,
of seven green seas,
it smothers rocks, kisses rocks,
drenches rocks
and slamming its chest,
repeats its name.
O sea, you declare yourself,
O comrade ocean,
don’t waste time and water,
don’t beat yourself up,
help us,
we are lowly
fishermen,
men of the shore,
we’re cold and hungry
and you’re the enemy,
don’t slam so hard,
don’t scream like that,
open your green trunk
and give all of us
on our hands
your silver gifts:
fish every day.
Here in each house,
we all crave it
whether it’s of silver,
crystal or moonlight,
spawn for the poor
kitchens on earth.
Don’t hoard it,
you miser,
coldly rushing like
wet lightning
beneath your waves.
Come, now,
open yourself
and leave it
near our hands,
help us, ocean,
deep green father,
end one day
our earthly poverty.
Let us
harvest your lives’
endless plantation,
your wheat and eggs,
your oxes, your metals,
the wet splendor
and submerged fruits.
Father sea, we know already
what you are called, all
the seagulls circulate
your name on the beaches:
now, behave yourself,
don’t shake you mane,
don’t threaten anyone,
don’t smash against the sky
your beautiful teeth,
ignore for a moment
your glorious history,
give to every man,
to every
woman and to every child,
a fish large or small
every day.
Go out to every street
in the world
and distribute fish
and then
scream,
scream
so all the working poor
could hear you,
so they could say,
sticking their heads
into the mine:
“Here comes the old man sea
to distribute fish.”
And they’ll go back down
into the darkness,
smiling, and on the streets
and in the forests,
men and the earth
will smile
an oceanic smile.
But
if you don’t want it,
if you don’t care for it,
then wait,
wait for us,
we must worry, first
we must try to solve
and straighten out
human affairs,
the biggest problems first,
then all the others,
and then
we’ll enter you,
we’ll chop the waves
with a knife made of fire,
on an electric horse
leaping over foam,
singing
we’ll sink
until we touch the bottom
of your guts,
an atomic thread
will guard your shank,
we’ll plant
in your deep garden
trees
of cement and steel,
we’ll tie
your hands and feet,
on your skin man will walk,
spitting,
yanking in bunches,
building armatures,
mounting and taming you
to dominate your spirit.
All this will occur
when us men
have straighten out
our problem,
the big,
the big problem.
We’ll slowly
solve everything:
we’ll force you, sea,
we’ll force you, earth
perform miracles,
because in our very selves,
in the struggle,
is fish, is bread,
is the miracle.
ODA AL MAR
Aquí en la isla
el mar
y cuánto mar
se sale de sí mismo
a cada rato,
dice que sí, que no,
que no, que no, que no,
dice que si, en azul,
en espuma, en galope,
dice que no, que no.
No puede estarse quieto,
me llamo mar, repite
pegando en una piedra
sin lograr convencerla,
entonces
con siete lenguas verdes
de siete perros verdes,
de siete tigres verdes,
de siete mares verdes,
la recorre, la besa,
la humedece
y se golpea el pecho
repitiendo su nombre.
Oh mar, así te llamas,
oh camarada océano,
no pierdas tiempo y agua,
no te sacudas tanto,
ayúdanos,
somos los pequeñitos
pescadores,
los hombres de la orilla,
tenemos frío y hambre
eres nuestro enemigo,
no golpees tan fuerte,
no grites de ese modo,
abre tu caja verde
y déjanos a todos
en las manos
tu regalo de plata:
el pez de cada día.
Aquí en cada casa
lo queremos
y aunque sea de plata,
de cristal o de luna,
nació para las pobres
cocinas de la tierra.
No lo guardes,
avaro,
corriendo frío como
relámpago mojado
debajo de tus olas.
Ven, ahora,
ábrete
y déjalo
cerca de nuestras manos,
ayúdanos, océano,
padre verde y profundo,
a terminar un día
la pobreza terrestre.
Déjanos
cosechar la infinita
plantación de tus vidas,
tus trigos y tus uvas,
tus bueyes, tus metales,
el esplendor mojado
y el fruto sumergido.
Padre mar, ya sabemos
cómo te llamas, todas
las gaviotas reparten
tu nombre en las arenas:
ahora, pórtate bien,
no sacudas tus crines,
no amenaces a nadie,
no rompas contra el cielo
tu bella dentadura,
déjate por un rato
de gloriosas historias,
danos a cada hombre,
a cada
mujer y a cada niño,
un pez grande o pequeño
cada día.
Sal por todas las calles
del mundo
a repartir pescado
y entonces
grita,
grita
para que te oigan todos
los pobres que trabajan
y digan,
asomando a la boca
de la mina:
"Ahí viene el viejo mar
repartiendo pescado".
Y volverán abajo,
a las tinieblas,
sonriendo, y por las calles
y los bosques
sonreirán los hombres
y la tierra
con sonrisa marina.
Pero
si no lo quieres,
si no te da la gana,
espérate,
espéranos,
lo vamos a pensar,
vamos en primer término
a arreglar los asuntos
humanos,
los más grandes primero,
todos los otros después,
y entonces
entraremos en ti,
cortaremos las olas
con cuchillo de fuego,
en un caballo eléctrico
saltaremos la espuma,
cantando
nos hundiremos
hasta tocar el fondo
de tus entrañas,
un hilo atómico
guardará tu cintura,
plantaremos
en tu jardín profundo
plantas
de cemento y acero,
te amarraremos
pies y manos,
los hombres por tu piel
pasearán escupiendo,
sacándote racimos,
construyéndote arneses,
montándote y domándote
dominándote el alma.
Pero eso será cuando
los hombres
hayamos arreglado
nuestro problema,
el grande,
el gran problema.
Todo lo arreglaremos
poco a poco:
te obligaremos, mar,
te obligaremos, tierra,
a hacer milagros,
porque en nosotros mismos,
en la lucha,
está el pez, está el pan,
está el milagro.
Ode to the Book
By Pablo Neruda
When I close a book
I open life.
I hear
faltering cries
among harbours.
Copper ignots
slide down sand-pits
to Tocopilla.
Night time.
Among the islands
our ocean
throbs with fish,
touches the feet, the thighs,
the chalk ribs
of my country.
The whole of night
clings to its shores, by dawn
it wakes up singing
as if it had excited a guitar.
The ocean's surge is calling.
The wind
calls me
and Rodriguez calls,
and Jose Antonio-I got a telegram
from the "Mine" Union
and the one I love
(whose name I won't let out)
expects me in Bucalemu.
No book has been able
to wrap me in paper,
to fill me up
with typography,
with heavenly imprints
or was ever able
to bind my eyes,
I come out of books to people orchards
with the hoarse family of my song,
to work the burning metals
or to eat smoked beef
by mountain firesides.
I love adventurous
books,
books of forest or snow,
depth or sky
but hate
the spider book
in which thought
has laid poisonous wires
to trap the juvenile
and circling fly.
Book, let me go.
I won't go clothed
in volumes,
I don't come out
of collected works,
my poems
have not eaten poems-they devour
exciting happenings,
feed on rough weather,
and dig their food
out of earth and men.
I'm on my way
with dust in my shoes
free of mythology:
send books back to their shelves,
I'm going down into the streets.
I learned about life
from life itself,
love I learned in a single kiss
and could teach no one anything
except that I have lived
with something in common among men,
when fighting with them,
when saying all their say in my song.
“Ode to Pablo’s Tennis Shoes”
Gary Soto
They wait under Pablo’s bed,
Rain-beaten, sun-beaten,
A scuff of green
At their tips
From when he fell
In the school yard.
He fell leaping for a football
That sailed his way.
But Pablo fell and got up,
Green on his shoes,
With the football
Out of reach.
Now it’s night.
Pablo is in bed listening
To his mother laughing
to the Mexican novelas on TV.
His shoes, twin pets
That snuggle his toes,
Are under the bed.
He should have bathed,
But he didn’t.
(Dirt rolls from his palm,
Blades of grass
Tumble from his hair.)
He wants to be
Like his shoes,
A little dirty
From the road,
A little worn
From racing to the drinking fountain
A hundred times in one day.
It takes water
To make him go,
And his shoes to get him
There. He loves his shoes,
Cloth like a sail,
Rubber like
A lifeboat on rough sea.
Pablo is tired,
Sinking into the mattress.
His eyes sting from
Grass and long words in books.
He needs eight hours
Of sleep
To cool his shoes,
The tongues hanging
Out, exhausted.
Ode to Typography
Entangled Gutenberg:
the house with spiders,in darkness,
Suddenly,a letter of gold enters
through the
window.
Thus printing was born…
Letters,
long, severe, vertical,
made of pure line,
erect like a ship’s mast in the middle
of
the page’s sea of confusion and
turbulence;
algebraic Bodoni,
upright letters,
trim as whippets
subjected to the white rectangle of
geometry;
Elzevirian vowels
stamped in the minute steel of the
printshop
by the water,
in Flanders, in the channeled North
ciphers
of the anchor;
characters of Aldus,
firm as the marine stature of Venice,
in whose mother waters,
like a leaning sail,
navigates the cursive curving the
alphabet:
the air of the oceanic discoverers
slanted
forever,
the profile of writing.
From medieval hands to your eye
advanced this N,
this double 8 this J,
this r of rey and rocio.
There they were wrought,
much as teeth, nails,
metallic hammers of language:
they beat each letter, erected it,
a small black statue on the
whiteness,
a petal or a starry foot of thought
taking the form of a mighty river,
finding its way to the sea of nations
with the entire alphabet
illuminating the estuary.
The paper’s eyes,
eyes which looked
at men seeking their gifts,
their history,their loves;
extending the accumulated treasure;
suddenly spreading the slowness of
wisdom
on the table like a deck of cards.
All the secret humus of the ages,
song,memory,revolt,blind parable,
suddenly were
fecundity,granary,letters,
letters that traveled and kindled,
letters that sailed and conquered,
letters that awakened and climbed,
letters dove-shaped that flew,
letters scarlet on the snow,
punctuation,roads,building of letters.
Yet,when writing displays its rose
gardens
and the letter its essential
cultivation,
when you read the old and the new
words,
the truths and the explorations,
I beg a thought
for the one who sets type,
for the linotypist with his lamp
like a pilot over the waves of
language
ordering winds and foam,
shadow and stars in the book:
man and steel once more united
against the nocturnal wing of
mystery,
sailing,researching,composing.
Typography,
let me celebrate you
in the purity of your pure profiles,
in the vessel of the letter O,
in the flesh flower vase of the Y,
in the Q of Quevedo,
(how can my poetry
pass before that letter
and not feel
the ancient shiver of the dying
sage?)
in the lily multi multiplied
of the V of victory,
in the E
escalated to climb to heaven,
in the Z
with its thunderbolt face,
in the near-orange P.
Love,
I love the letters of your hair,
the U of your look,
the S of your figure.
My love,
your hair surrounds me
as jungle or dictionary
with its profused red language.
In everything,
in the wake of the worm,one reads,
in the rose,one reads,
the roots are filled with letters
twisted by the dampness of the
forest
and in the heavens of Isla Negra,
in the night,I read,
read in the coast’s cold firmament,
intense,diaphanous with
beauty,unfurled,
with capital and lower case stars,
and exclamation points of frozen
diamonds.
Yet the letter was not beauty alone,
but life,
peace for the soldier;
it went down to the solitudes of the
mine,
and the miner read the hard and
clandestine
flyer,
hid it in the folds of the secret heart
and
above,
on earth he became another
and another was his word.
Typography,
I am only a poet
and you are the flowery play of
reason,
the movement of the chess bishops
of intelligence
You rest neither at night nor in
winter,
you circulate in the veins of our
anatomy
and if you do sleep or fly away
during the
night
or strike or fatigue or breakage of
linotype,
you descend anew to the book or
newspaper
like a cloud or birds to their nest.
You return to the system,
to the inevitable order of
intelligence.
Letters!
continue to fall
like precise rain along my way.
Letters of all that lives and dies,
letters of light,
off moon,of silence of water,
I love you,
and in you
I gather not only thought and
combat,
but your dress,senses and sounds:
A of glorious avena,
T of trigo and torre
and M
like your name of manzana.
ODE TO THE LIVER
by Pablo Neruda
Modest,
together
friend,
profound
worker,
huge life flyer
let me give you
the wing
of my song,
its feather
in a wind,
the very blowing
and leaping
of my ode
springing
from your invisible
machine
and flying from your
indefatigable,
tight, fleshy
energy industry,
(such a delicate
and powerful
cradle against fatigue!)
always living
with your own dark
filtering...
While the heart
plucks mandolin strings,
you suck and score,
you distinguish and divide,
you increase and lubricate,
you give home
to life’s enzymes
and grams of experience
collecting liquors
at this song’s party
and after cleaning up,
you are warmly last
to say goodbye.
Seafaring anger soul
whose innards
measure blood,
you live hands on
oars and eyes ahead
navigating
the hidden mysteries,
the alchemist’s chamber
of life’s microscopic,
echoic, inner oceans.
Yellow is your system
through red deep sea diving
to the most dangerous
depths
where man is down
and eternally hiding
silent in his own
powerhouse.
Every feeling,
all stimuli
resound in your tireless
machinery;
to the works of love
you added the anger,
fire and melancholy
of one simple,
wrong turn,
one small cell goes astray:
the pilot flies the wrong sky,
the tenor shrinks to whisper,
the astronomer loses his
planet,
--nothing responds as it
might,
your illuminated
fibers
tire.
How horizon bright
the rose’s
twitching eyes,
and the petal lips
of the carnation
as they kiss love’s
early morning,
how wet with sex
is their flowering,
a river for all
elemental springs,
and always down here,
beneath the flow and bed
is the liver
with its own chemistry,
its own filter and scale,
a visceral warehouse
of subtle changes;
almost nobody
dives this deep to see
or sing to it,
unless it becomes old,
its stones worn to sand
and with less tide
do the eyes go out
of the rose,
the carnation’s teeth
decay and wilt
so that the maiden
no longer sings
with the music
of water,
her constant,
her flowing.
Severe part of all
and self,
austere grandfather to the
heart,
energy mill;
I sing fear’s poem to you
as though you were an editor
judging rhythm and word
according to printable space
and if I can’t write pure,
if excessive poeting
of my hereditary wines
and homeland
upset my health
or balance of phrase and
blood
from you,
obscure monarch,
reader,
dispenser of honey wisdom,
poison silence,
and salt of experience,
from you I expect justice;
I love life,
don’t stop my line,
perform for me!
Ode to Federico García
Lorca
by Pablo Neruda
If I could weep with fear in a
lonely house,
if I could pluck out my eyes
and eat them,
I'd do it for your mourning
orangetree voice
and for your poetry that flies
up shouting.
For they paint the hospitals
blue for you,
and the schools and maritime
districts grow,
and the wounded angels are
covered with feathers,
and the nuptial fish are
covered with scales,
and the hedgehogs go flying
to heaven:
for you the tailorshops with
their black membranes
fill with spoons and with blood,
swallow torn ribbons, kill
themselves with kisses,
and dress in white.
When you fly dressed in
peach,
when you laugh with a laugh
of hurricane rice,
when you flap your arteries
and teeth to sing,
your throat and your fingers,
I could die for the sweetness
you are,
I could die for the crimsom
lakes
where you live in the midst of
Autumn
with a fallen charger and a
bloodied god,
I could die for the graveyards
that pass at night
like ashen rivers, with water
and graves,
between muffled bells:
rivers dense as dormitories
of sick soldiers, that suddenly
swell
towards death in rivers with
marble numbers
and rotten garlands, and
funeral oils:
I could die from seeing you at
night
watching the drowned crosses
pass,
afoot and weeping,
because you weep before the
river of death,
abandoned and wounded,
you weep weeping, your eyes
filled
with tears, with tears, with
tears.
At night, desperately alone, if I
could gather
forgetfullness, shadow and
smoke
above railroads and
steamships,
with a black funnel,
chewing the ashes,
I'd do it for the tree in which
you grow,
for the nests of golden waters
you unite,
and for the net that covers
your bones
telling you the secret of the
night.
Cities with damp onion
fragrance
wait for you to pass singing
hoarsely,
and silent boats of sperm
pursue uyou,
and green swallows nest in
your hair,
and snails and weeks too,
furled masts and cherrytrees
circle definitively when your
pale head with fifty eyes
and your mouth of submerged
blood appear.
If I could fill the mayors' posts
with soot
and throw down watches,
sobbing,
it would be to watch: when at
your house
summer arrives with broken
lips,
a crowd arrives in death-watch
clothes,
regions of sad splendor arrive,
dead plows and poppies
arrive,
gravediggers and horsemen
arrive,
planets and maps of blood
arrive,
divers covered with ash arrive,
masqueraders dragging
virgins
pierced with large knives
arrive,
hospitals, ants, roots, springs
and veins arrive,
the night arrives with the bed
on which
a lonely Hussar dies among
the spiders,
a rose of hatred and pins
arrives,
a yellowed embarkation
arrives,
a windy day with a child
arrives,
I arrive with Oliverio and
Norah,
Vicente Aleixandre, Delia,
Maruca, Malva Marina, María
Luisa y Larco,
la Rubia, Rafael, Ugarte,
Cotapos, Rafael Alberti,
Carlos, Bebé, Manolo
Altolaguirre, Molinari,
Rosales, Concha Méndez,
and others I've forgotten.
Come to what crowns you,
youth of health,
gay butterfly, youth pure
as a black lightning
perpetually free;
and talking between
ourselves.
now, when no one is left
among the rocks,
let us speak simply, as you
are, as I am:
what are the verses for, if not
for the dew?
What are the verses for, if not
for this night
in which a bitter dagger finds
us out, for this day,
for this twilight, for this broken
corner
where the beaten heart of man
prepares to die?
Over everything at night,
at night there are many stars,
all within a river
like a ribbon beside the
windows
of houses filled with poor
people.
Someone they know has died,
maybe they've lost their jobs in
the offices,
in the hospitals, in the
elevators, in the mines;
they endure their purpose
stubbornly, wounded,
and there's purpose and
weeping everywhere:
while the stars flow on in an
endless river
there is much weeping in the
windows,
the thresholds are worn by the
weeping,
the bedrooms are soaked by
the weeping
that comes in the shape of a
wave to corrode the carpets.
Federico,
you see the world, the streets,
the vinegar,
the farewells in the stations
where the smoke lifts its
decisiive wheels
toward where there is nothing
but some
separations, stones, iron
tracks.
There are so many people
asking questions everywhere.
There's the bloodied blind
man, and the angry man,
the discouraged man,
the miserable man, the tree of
fingernails,
the thief with envy riding his
back.
Life's like this, Federico; here
you have
the things my friendship can
offer you,
from a melancholy manly man.
Already you've learned many
things by yourself,
and slowly you will be learning
more.
Ode To Bird Watching
by Pablo Neruda
translated by Jodey Bateman
Now
Let's look for birds!
The tall iron branches
in the forest,
The dense
fertility on the ground.
The world
is wet.
A dewdrop or raindrop
shines,
a diminutive star
among the leaves.
The morning time
mother earth
is cool.
The air
is like a river
which shakes
the silence.
It smells of rosemary,
of space
and roots.
Overhead,
a crazy song.
It's a bird.
How
out of its throat
smaller than a finger
can there fall the waters
of its song?
Luminous ease!
Invisible
power
torrent
of music
in the leaves.
Sacred conversations!
Clean and fresh washed
is this
day resounding
like a green dulcimer.
I bury
my shoes
in the mud,
jump over rivulets.
A thorn
bites me and a gust
of air like a crystal
wave
splits up inside my chest.
Where
are the birds?
Maybe it was
that
rustling in the foliage
or that fleeting pellet
of brown velvet
or that displaced
perfume? That
leaf that let loose cinnamon
smell
- was that a bird? That dust
from an irritated magnolia
or that fruit
which fell with a thump was that a flight?
Oh, invisible little
critters
birds of the devil
with their ringing
with their useless feathers.
I only want
to caress them,
to see them resplendent.
I don't want
to see under glass
the embalmed lightning.
I want to see them living.
I want to touch their gloves
of real hide,
which they never forget in
the branches
and to converse with
them
sitting on my shoulders
although they may leave
me like certain statues
undeservedly whitewashed.
Impossible.
You can't touch them.
You can hear them
like a heavenly
rustle or movement.
They converse
with precision.
They repeat
their observations.
They brag
of how much they do.
They comment
on everything that exists.
They learn
certain sciences
like hydrography.
and by a sure science
they know
where there are harvests
of grain.
Ode to Thanks
By Pablo Neruda
Thanks to the word
that says thanks!
Thanks to thanks,
word
that melts
iron and snow!
The world is a threatening place
until
thanks
makes the rounds
from one pair of lips to another,
soft as a bright
feather
and sweet as a petal of sugar,
filling the mouth with its sound
or else a mumbled
whisper.
Life becomes human again:
it’s no longer an open window.
A bit of brightness
strikes into the forest,
and we can sing again beneath the leaves.
Thanks, you’re the medicine we take
to save us from
the bite of scorn.
Your light brightens the altar of
harshness.
Or maybe
a tapestry
known
to far distant peoples.
Travelers
fan out
into the wilds,
and in the jungle
of strangers,
merci
rings out
while the hustling train
changes countries,
sweeping away borders,
then spasibo
clinging to pointy
volcanoes, to fire and freezing cold,
or danke, yes! and gracias, and
the world turns into a table:
a single word has wiped it clean,
plates and glasses gleam,
silverware tinkles,
and the tablecloth is as broad as a plain.
Thank you, thanks,
for going out and returning,
for rising up
and settling down.
We know, thanks,
that you don’t fill every spaceyou’re only a wordbut
where your little petal
appears
the daggers of pride take cover,
and there’s a penny’s worth of smiles.
Ode to the Atom
by Pablo Neruda trans. by Margaret Sayers Peden
Infinitesimal
star,
you seemed
forever
buried
in metal, hidden,
your diabolic
fire.
One day
someone knocked
at your tiny
door:
it was man.
With one
explosion
he unchained you,
you saw the world,
you came out
into the daylight,
you traveled through
cities,
your great brilliance
illuminated lives,
you were a
terrible fruit
of electric beauty,
you came to
hasten the flames
of summer,
and then
wearing
a predator’s eyeglasses,
armor,
and a checked shirt,
sporting sulfuric mustaches
and a prehensile tail,
came
the warrior
and seduced you:
sleep,
he told you,
curl up,
atom, you resemble
a Greek god,
a Parisian modiste
in springtime,
lie down here
on my fingernail,
climb into this little box,
and then
the warrior
put you in his jacket
as if you were nothing but
a North American
pill,
and he traveled through the world
and dropped you
on Hiroshima.
We awakened.
The dawn
had been consumed.
All the birds
burned to ashes.
An odor
of coffins,
gas from tombs,
thundered through space.
The shape of punishment arose,
hideous,
superhuman,
bloody mushroom dome,
cloud of smoke,
sword
of hell.
Burning air arose,
spreading death
on parallel waves,
reaching
the mother sleeping
with her child,
the river fisherman
and the fish,
the bakery
and the bread,
the engineer
and his buildings;
everything
was acid
dust,
assassin
air.
The city
crumbled its last honeycombs
and fell, fell suddenly,
demolished,
rotten;
men
were instant lepers,
they took
their children’s hand
and the little hand
fell off in theirs.
So, from your refuge
in the secret
mantle of stone
in which fire slept
they took you,
blinding spark,
raging light,
to destroy lives,
to threaten distant existences,
beneath the sea,
in the air,
on the sands,
in every twist and turn
of the ports,
to destroy
seeds,
to kill cells,
to stunt the corolla,
they destined you, atom,
to level
nations,
to turn love into a black pustule,
to burn heaped-up hearts
and annihilate blood.
Mad spark,
go back
to your shroud,
bury yourself
in your mineral mantle,
be blind stone once again,
ignore the outlaws,
and collaborate
with life, with growing things,
replace motors,
elevate energy,
fertilize planets.
You have no secret
now,
walk
among men
without your terrible
mask,
pick up your pace
and pace
the picking of the fruit,
parting
mountains,
straightening rivers,
making fertile,
atom,
overflowing
cosmic
cup,
return
to the peace of the vine,
to the velocity of joy,
return to the province
of nature,
place yourself at our service,
and instead of the fatal
ashes
of your mask,
instead of the unleashed infernos
of your wrath,
instead of the menace
of your terrible light, deliver to us
your amazing
rebelliousness
for our grain,
your unchained magnetism
to found peace among men,
and then your dazzling light
will be happiness,
not hell,
hope of morning,
gift to earth.
Ode to Criticism
by Pablo Neruda
trans. by Margaret Sayers Peden
I wrote five poems:
one was green,
another a round wheaten loaf,
the third was a house, abuilding,
the fourth a ring,
and the fifth was
brief as a lighting flash,
and as I wrote it,
it branded my reason.
Well, then, men
and women
came and took
my simple materials,
breeze, wind, radiance, clay, wood,
and with such ordinary things
constructed
walls, floors, and dreams.
On one line of my poetry
they hung out the wash to dry.
They ate my words
for dinner,
they kept them
by the head of their beds,
they lived with poetry,
with the light that escaped from my side.
Then
came a mute critic,
then another babbling tongues,
and others, many others, came,
some blind, some all-seeing,
some of them as elegant
as carnations with bright red shoes,
others as severely clothed as corpses,
some were partisans
of the king and his exalted monarchy,
others had been snared
in Marx’s brow
and were kicking their feet in his beard,
some were English,
plain and simply English,
and among them
they set out
with tooth and knife,
with dictionaries and other dark weapons,
with venerable quotes,
they set out to take my poor poetry
from the simple folk
who loved it.
They trapped and tricked it,
they rolled it in a scroll,
they secured it with a hundred pins,
they covered it with skeleton dust,
they drowned in ink,
they spit on it with the suave
benignity of a cat,
they used it to wrap clocks,
they protected it and condemned it,
they stored it with crude oil,
they dedicated damp treatises to it,
they boiled it with milk,
they showered it with pebbles,
and in the process erased the vowels from it,
their syllables and sighs
nearly killed it,
they crumbled it and tied it up in a
little package
they scrupulously addressed
to their attics and cemeteries,
then,
one by one, they retired,
enraged to the point of madness
because I wasn’t
popular enough for them,
or saturated with mild contempt
for my customary lack of shadows,
they left,
all of them,
and then,
once again,
men and women
came to live
with my poetry,
once again
they lighted fires,
built houses,
broke bread,
they shared the light
and in love joined
the lightning flash and the ring.
And now,
gentlemen, if you will excuse me
for interrupting this story
I’m telling,
I am leaving to live
forever
with simple people.
Ode to the Seagull
by Pablo Neruda trans. by Margaret Sayers Peden
To the seagull
high above
the pinewoods
of the coast,
on the wind
the sibilant
syllable of my ode.
Sail,
bright boat,
winged banner,
in my verse,
stitch,
body of silver,
your emblem
across the shirt
of the icy firmament,
oh, aviator,
gentle
serenade of flight,
snow arrow, serene
ship in the transparent storm,
steady, you soar
while
the hoarse wind sweeps
the meadows of the sky.
After your long voyage,
feathered magnolia,
triangle borne
aloft on the air,
slowly you regain
your form,
arranging
your silvery robes, shaping
your bright treasure in an oval,
again a
white bud of flight,
a round
seed,
egg of beauty.
Another
poet
would end here
his triumphant ode.
I cannot
limit myself
to
the luxurious whiteness
of useless froth.
Forgive me,
seagull,
I am
a realist
poet,
photographer of the sky.
You eat,
and eat,
and eat,
there is nothing
you don’t devour,
on the waters of the bay
you bark
like a beggar’s dog,
you pursue
the last
scrap of
fish gut,
you peck
at your white sisters,
you steal
your despicable prize,
a rotting clump
of floating garbage,
you stalk
decayed
tomatoes,
the discarded
rubbish of the cove.
But
in you
it is transformed
into clean wing,
white geometry,
the ecstatic line of flight.
That is why,
snowy anchor,
aviator,
I celebrate you as you are:
your insatiable voraciousness,
your screech in the rain,
or at rest
a snowflake blown
from the storm,
at peace or in flight,
seagull,
I consecrate to you
my earthbound words,
my clumsy attempt at flight;
let’s see whether you scatter
your birdseed in my ode.
Ode to Spring
by Pablo Neruda
trans. by Ken Krabbenhoft
Fearsome
spring,
zany
rose,
you will arrive
unnoticed—
here you come now—
the merest
flit of a wing, a kiss
of jasmine-scented mist.
Hats
can feel it,
and horses.
The wind
delivers a green letter
for all the trees to read
and the leaves
take
a first peek,
a fresh look at things.
They’re sure:
everything is ready—
the ancient, uncontestable sun,
and talking water,
everything.
Now
skirts of foliage
spread all at once,
spring dressed in emerald green,
zany
spring,
unfettered sunlight,
green mare.
The whole world
reaches out
groping for
substance
in which to repeat its form.
Seeds shuffle
their tiny sacred feet,
men
squeeze
the love in their beloved,
and the earth is filled
with newness,
with petals falling
like sifting flour,
the earth
shines freshly painted,
exposing
its fragrance
in open wounds,
kisses from the lips of
carnations,
roses in scarlet tides.
This is how it should be!
Now,
spring,
tell me your purpose,
and who’s your master.
And that man shut away
In a cave—
did you pay him a call?
Did the poor lawyer
huddled in his office
see your petals blossom
on his dusty carpet?
Did the miner
In the mineshaft back home
know nothing
beyond a spring blackened
with coal
and poisoned by a sulphurous
wind?
Spring,
my girl,
I’ve been waiting for you!
Here, take this broom, sweep
the world clean!
Take this cloth
and scour
the farthest places,
blow
on mankind’s rooftops,
blast open
those deposits
of ore,
share with us
all that hidden
wealth.
Lend me a hand
when
mankind
is
finally
free
from poverty,
dust,
and rags,
free from debts,
sores,
and pain,
when
your elfin hands and the hands
of the people make magic,
when on this earth
fire and love
caress your leaping
pearly feet,
when
you, spring,
come into
the houses
of all mankind.
It will be no sin to love you,
deranged dahlia,
crazed acacia—
my beloved,
to stand by your side, your scent
and your abundance, without
regret to love
your naked
burning snow
and your gushing
(never excluding
the happiness of other men),
and the mysterious honey
brewed by bees that work all
day,
without black people kept
separate
from whites.
O spring
of poor people’s nights:
free of poverty,
fragrant spring:
you will arrive,
as you are now arriving.
I see you
coming up the road.
Yes, this is my house.
Come in.
You’ve been detained,
I know, you’re late—
but how good it is to bloom,
what wonderful
labor!
You’re a hard
worker,
spring,
with your weaving
and sweating in the fields ,
and milking the cows.
You’re a bee multiplied,
a machine
invisible,
a cicada mill.
Come in,
come into all our houses,
come on in.
We’ll work together
in the perfect, flowering
abundance to come.
Ode to Clouds
by Pablo Neruda
trans. by Ken Krabbenhoft
Clouds of southern skies,
winged clouds,
clouds
of whitest steam , heaven’s clothing,
petals, perfect fish
of summertime:
you are heavenly girls
lying on your backs in grass and on beaches
of spreading sky,
silk in sunlight, white springtime,
the sky’s childhood.
Splashed across the heavens, rushing by
lofted
lightly
on air,
giant feathers
of light, nests
of water,
and now a single
filament
of flame or rage
ignites
meadows
of sky
and blooming
almond trees.
Every equinox
this laundry
is devoured
by green
leopards,
slashed by scimitars,
attacked by
fire
hydrants.
Clouds that arrive on time
but without hope
for the sun’s
daily
demise,
the whole
horizon’s
ritual dance:
no sooner
have sluggish seabirds
crossed this space, flying
above the view,
than clouds are ripped apart,
light from this frenzied fan
falls apart,
there is no more life or fire: they were simply
the sky’s celebration.
But for you, swollen
storm cloud, I am holding
that space
over mountain and sea, that space of shadows,
of panic and darkness above the world.
And whether you stand above sheaves
of sea spray
in the ocean’s
outraged night,
or above the muted mane
of nocturnal forests,
you, cloud, shed
a steely ink
and cotton puffs of mourning in which
the pale stars drown.
Darkness falls
from your umbrella
with the heaviness of lead, then
electrified water and smoke
tremble like dark
flags, shaken
by fear.
You water
your darkness
and join it to the sleep
of black roots:
this is how earth’s splendor
emerges to sparkle
again
after storms.
Spring’s
cloud, fragrant
vessel, perfect
lily
of heaven,
unfortunate widow’s cloak,
black mother of thunder:
I want a suit of clouds,
a shirt
of your substance.
Sweep me along the edge
of light, or mount me
on a steed of shadow
to race the length of the sky.
Thus will I touch reefs and forests,
scale waterfalls and cities,
peer into the world’s secret heart,
and when I’m done I’ll return
to earth with the rain,
and commune quietly with roots.
Ode to Fire
by Pablo Neruda
trans. by Ken Krabbenhoft
autumn or sudden summer,
gunpowder’s dry thunder,
Wild-haired fire,
collapse of mountain ranges,
Jumpy
river of smoke,
and blind but studded with eyes,
obscurity and silence.
sassy,
tardy, and unpredictable,
Where are you, where have you
golden star,
gone?
thief of wood,
There’s nothing left of your bonfires
silent outlaw,
but drifting dust
cooker of onions,
and, on our hands, burn marks
renowned swindler cloaked in
or the imprint of flowers.
sparks,
In the end I’ve found you
rabid dog with a million teeth:
on the blank page in front of me.
hear me
I’ll make myself sing your praise,
heart of hearths,
fire,
bush of undying roses,
right now,
destroyer of lives,
before my very eyes.
heavenly father of bread and ovens,
Keep
famous forefather
quiet while I search
of wheels and instruments,
the closets for my lyre,
breeder of metals,
also the camera
refiner of steel,
with the black lightning bolts,
fire,
so I can take your picture.
hear me.
In the end you
Your name crackles with flame:
stay with me
it's a pleasure
not to do me in,
to say “fire,”
not so I can make you
much better
light my pipe,
than “stone”
but so I can touch you,
or “grain.”
smooth your hair—every
Words seem lifeless
dangerous strand—
next to your yellow blaze
so I can spruce you up or wound
next to your red tail,
you,
next to your bright amaranth mane.
so you’ll have the courage
Words are simply cold.
to charge me,
We say “fire”—
scarlet bull.
fire! fire! fire!—
Go ahead,
and there’s something
burn me
burning in our mouth:
now,
it’s your fruit that burns,
flare
it’s your laurel that crackles.
into my song,
course
But you’re not
through my veins,
just a word,
exit
though words
through my mouth.
entirely lacking
in flame
Now
shake loose and fall
you know:
from the tree of time.
you’re no match
You are
for me.
flower,
I’m turning you into song,
fancy,
I can feel you up and down,
consummation, embrace,
trap you into syllables of my making.
and elusive substance.
I’ll put you in shackles, order you
You are violence and destruction,
to whistle
secrecy, stormy
or melt away in trills
wing of death and life,
as if you were
creation and ashes alike.
a caged canary.
You are a dazzling spark,
a sword covered with eyes,
you are eminence,
I’m not impressed
by your famous firebird
tunic from hell.
Here
you're condemned
to life and death.
If I fall silent
you vanish.
If I sing
you melt away,
giving me all the light I need.
Of all
my friends
and
enemies,
you’re
the hardest to handle.
Everybody else
carries you tied up,
a demon in their pockets,
a hurricane locked away
in boxes and decrees.
But not me.
I carry you right alongside me,
and I’m telling you this:
it’s high time
you showed me
what you can do.
Open up, let down
your tangled
hair,
leap up and singe
the heights of heaven.
Show me
your green and orange
body,
raise
your flags,
crackle
on the surface of the earth
or right here by my side, as calm
as a pale topaz.
Look at me, then go to sleep.
Climb the stairs
on your multitude of feet.
Chase me,
come alive
so I can write you down,
so you can sing
with my words
in your own way,
burning.
Ode to Rain
by Pablo Neruda
trans. by Ken Krabbenhoft
The rain returned.
It didn’t come from the sky
or out of the West:
it came straight from my childhood.
Night split open, a peal of thunder
rattled, the racket
swept every lonely corner,
and then
the rain came,
rain returning
from my childhood,
first
a raging
gust,
then
a planet’s
soggy
tail.
The rain
goes ticktock, a thousand ticks
a thousand
tocks, a sleigh
or an ample burst
of dark petals
in the night,
suddenly
intense,
riddling
the leaves
with needles;
other times it’s
a stormy
cloak
drifting down
in silence.
Rain,
sea of the upper air,
fresh,
naked rose,
voice of the sky,
black violin,
sheer beauty:
I have loved you
since childhood
not for your goodness
but for your beauty.
I trudged along
in my ruined shoes
while threads
of streaming sky
unraveled over
my head,
bringing
a message
from on high,
to me and to roots,
humid oxygen,
freedom of the forest.
I know
how mischievous you can be,
the hole
in the roof
dripping
measured drops
on poor peoples’
rooms.
That’s when you rip off the mask
of beauty,
when you’re as mean
as
heavenly
armor
or a dagger of transparent
glass.
That’s where
I really came to know you.
But
I was
still
yours
in love,
in the night,
shutting my eyes tight,
I hoped you would fall
on the world.
I hoped you would sing
for my ears alone,
because my heart cradled
the earth’s sprouting,
in my heart metals merge,
wheat springs out of my heart.
But loving you still
left a bitter taste
in my mouth,
the bitter aftertaste of regret.
Just last night,
here in Santiago,
houses
in Nueva Legua
collapsed,
fragile
mushrooms,
heaps
of humiliation.
Because of your heavy footsteps
they fell,
children
cried in the mire
and day after day
in rain-soaked beds,
on shattered chairs,
the women,
bonfires for kitchens
while you, black rain,
enemy rain,
kept on falling
on our misery.
I believe
that some day—
a day we will mark on calendars—
they will live under sound roofs,
dry roofs,
men with their dreams,
everyone
who sleeps,
and when in the middle of the night
the rain
returns
from my childhood,
it will sing
for other children to hear,
and the song
of rain falling on the world
will be joyous.
It will be industrious, too,
and proletarian,
absorbed
in fertilizing mountains
and plains,
revitalizing rivers,
festooning
collapsed gullies
forgotten in the hills,
hard at work
in the ice
of gale-force
winds,
dancing on the backs
of cattle,
fortifying spring seeds
of wheat,
bathing secretive
almond trees,
working
at full steam
and with elusive subtlety,
all hands and threads,
on earth’s preparations.
Rain
from yesterday,
O sad
rain
of Lonocoche and Temuco,
sing,
sing,
sing on rooftops
and in leaves,
sing in freezing winds,
sing in my heart, in my trust,
on my roof, in my veins,
sing in my whole life.
I’m no longer scared of you:
go on, slide down
toward the earth
singing your song
and mine.
We’ve got to get to work
with these seeds.
We’ll share
our duties singing.
Ode to Peace and Quiet
by Pablo Neruda trans. by Ken Krabbenhoft
Deep
restfulness,
still
water,
bright peaceful shade:
emerging
from the fray, the way
lakes emerge from waterfalls,
merciful reward,
perfect petal.
I lie
face up
and watch
the sky stream by.
Its deep blue mass
slides past.
Where
is it headed,
with its fish, its islands
and estuaries?
Above me
the sky,
below me
the rustling
of a desiccated rose.
Small things
fidget, insects
flit by like numbers:
this is the earth,
roots
are at work
down below,
minerals
and water
seep into
our bodies
and germinate inside us.
Lying there motionless,
that day beneath the tree,
we knew nothing of this:
the leaves were all talking,
trading
news of other trees,
stories about their homeland,
about trees.
Some still remember
the leopard’s
stealthy shape
moving like solid
mist
through their branches;
others recall
snow whipped by gales,
the storm season’s
scepter.
We should
let all mouths
speak,
not just
trees:
we should sit still in the midst
of this incalculable song.
Nothing on earth lacks a voice:
When we close
our eyes
we hear
things that slither,
creatures that are growing,
the creaking
of unseen wood,
and then
the world,
earth, heavenly waters,
air:
everything sounds
like thunder, at times,
other times
like a distant river.
Peace and quiet, a moment’s
rest, or a day’s:
from your depths we will gather
minerals,
from your unspeaking face
musical light will issue.
This is how we’ll perfect our actions.
This is how men and women will speak
the earth’s conviction, and never know it.
Ode to Solitude
by Pablo Neruda
trans. by Ken Krabbenhoft
O solitude, beautiful
word: crabgrass
grows between your syllables!
But you are only a pale
word, fool’s
gold
and counterfeit coin!
I painted solitude in literary
Strokes,
dressed it in a tie
I had copied from a book,
and the shirt
of sleep.
But
I first really saw it when I was by myself.
I’d never seen an animal
quite like it:
it looks like
a hairy spider
or the flies
that hover over dung,
and its camel paws have
suckers like a deep-sea snake.
It stinks like a warehouse piled high
with brown hides of rats and seals
that have been rotting forever.
Solitude, I want you
to stop
lying through the mouths of books.
Consider the brooding young poet:
he's looking for a black marble slab
to seduce
the sleeping senorita; in your honor he erects
a simple statue
that he’ll forget
the morning of his wedding.
But
in the half-light of those early years
we boys stumble across her
and take her for a black goddess
shipped from distant islands.
We play with her torso and pledge
the perfect reverence of childhood.
As for the creativity
of solitude: it’s a lie.
Seeds don’t live
singly underneath the soil:
it takes hordes of them to ensure
the deep harmony of our lives,
and water is but the transparent mother
of invisible submarine choirs.
The desert
is the earth’s solitude, and mankind’s
solitude
is sterile
like the desert. The same
hours, nights and days
wrap the whole planet
in their cloak—
but they leave nothing in the desert.
Solitude does not accept seeds.
A ship on the sea
isn’t the only image of its beauty.
It flies over the water like a dove,
end product
of wondrous collaborations
between fires and stokers,
navigators and stars,
men’s arms and flags in congregation,
shared loves and destinies.
In its search for self-expression
music sought out
the choir’s coral hardness.
It was written
not by a single man
but by a whole score
of musical relations.
And this word
which I poise here suspended on a branch,
this song that yearns
solely for the solitude of your lips
to repeat it—
the air inscribes it at my side, lives
that were lived long before me.
And you, who are reading my ode:
you've used it against your own solitude.
We’ve never met, and yet it’s in your hands
that wrote these lines, with mine.
Ode to Energy
by Pablo Neruda
trans. by Ken Krabbenhoft
Your black-leafed plant
seemed to slumber
within the heart of coal.
Later,
released,
it stirred,
surged forward,
became
a mad tongue
of fire.
It dwelt inside
locomotives
and steamships,
red rose hidden away,
entrails of steel.
And you, coming straight
from the secret
black
shafts, blind—
you gave yourself up.
Engines,
wheels,
and machinery,
movement,
light, shuddering
and sounds
began pouring
out of you, energy,
mother energy.
You gave birth to them
in spasms,
you singed the firebox
and the blue stoker’s
hands,
you annihilated distance
howling howling
in your cage,
and there, where you
burned yourself up,
in that place touched by your fire,
clusters of fruit also arrived,
windows
multiplied,
pages came together like feathers,
and the wings of books took flight.
Men were born and trees fell to the ground,
and the soil was fertile.
Energy, in a grape’s shape
you are fat drops
of sugar dressed in mourning,
a transparent
planet,
liquid flame, sphere
of frenzied purple.
You are also repeated
seeds of spice,
wheat germ,
cereal star, living
lodestone and living steel, towers
hung with humming wires,
waters in motion,
taut
silent
dove
of energy source
of beings. You exalt
the little boy’s blood,
you grow like a plant that blossoms in his eyes,
you harden his hands
beating and stretching him
until he grows into a man.
Fire that rushes and sings,
water of creation,
growth itself:
change our lives,
draw
bread from stones,
gold from the sky,
cities from the desert.
Give us,
energy,
the essence you are hoarding,
project your gifts of fire
far away,
to the steppes,
forge fruits, set ablaze
treasuries of wheat,
break the soil, level
mountains, deliver
fresh
fertility
to all the earth
so that from now on,
beginning over there,
from the place where
life was transformed,
the earth will
be changed,
the whole
earth,
islands
and deserts,
and mankind, too.
The, O energy,
sword of fire,
you will cease being
our enemy:
your tamed
mane will be
all fruit and flower,
your flames
will bring peace and order,
fertility and doves,
and abundance of fruit
and fresh bread from the plains.
Ode to Envy
by Pablo Neruda
trans. by Ken Krabbenhoft
I had come
kissed women, men,
from the South, from the Frontier,
and children.
where life was drizzly.
I belonged, I had a homeland.
When I arrived in Santiago,
Luck was with me.
I worked hard
I walked arm in arm
at dressing differently.
with Joy.
My clothes were made
From then on, at night
for harsh winters.
and in winter,
Flowers of bad weather
in trains and in the thick
covered me.
of battle,
I bled myself dry changing
by seashores, in mine shafts
addresses.
and in deserts, next to
Everything was used up:
the woman I loved
even air
and on the run from
smelled like sadness.
police,
Wallpaper peeled
I wrote simple poems
from the walls
for all mankind,
of cheap hotels,
to keep from dying.
but I wrote and kept on writing
And now
in order to keep from dying.
they're back:
And no sooner had
they’re as dogged
my boyish poems
as earthworms,
of exile
as invisible
burned a path
as rats
through the streets
on a ship.
than little Teddy barked in my ear,
They sail
and Ginger bit my leg.
where I sail,
I dove
and if I’m careless they nip at
into the abyss
my heels.
of the poorest houses—
They exist because I exist.
underneath the bed,
What can I do?
in the kitchen
What else
or deep inside a closet
but keep on singing
where nobody could probe me,
until I die.
and I wrote on, simply .
At this point I simply
to keep from dying.
can't give in.
It made no difference. They rose up
Maybe they’d like
Threatening
a present
my poetry
wrapped in pretty paper,
with hooks and knives
or an umbrella
and black pliers.
to keep themselves dry
in the nasty rain
So I crossed
that arrived with me from the
oceans,
Frontier.
hating those climates
I could teach them how to ride
where fever whispers along the
horseback
waters:
or encourage
engulfed by shrill
them to pet my dog.
saffron and vengeful gods,
But I want them to know
I wandered lost in the din
I cannot
of dark drums
wire my mouth shut
and panting
so they can write poetry
twilights.
in my place.
I buried myself alive,
That’s not possible.
then I kept on writing, simply
I really can’t.
to keep from dying.
Sadly or lovingly,
in the chill of early morning,
My home was so far away, that’s
at three in the afternoon
how completely I’d let go.
or in the middle of the night—
But here the alligators
at any hour of the day—
were sharpening
whether I’m enraged or basking in
their long green rows of teeth.
love,
on trains and in springtime,
I returned from my journeys,
in the dark or as I leave
kissed everybody hello—
a wedding,
walking through my woods
or through my study,
at three in the afternoon
or in the middle of the night,
an any hour of the day:
I will go on writing not simply
to keep from dying
but to help
others live,
because it seems someone
needs my song.
Relentless is what I’ll be,
utterly relentless.
So I’ll beg them
to make no truce
when defending the flag of envy,
for I’ve gotten used to its teeth.
In fact I need them.
But I want them also to know
(it’s true)
that one day I will die
(I’ll have to give them
this last satisfaction).
Of this there is no doubt.
But
I will go down singing.
And I am relatively certain
(though they won’t like to hear it)
that my song
will be heard
on this side of death,
in the heart
of my country:
it will be my voice, a voice
of fire and rain,
and the voice of other people.
For it is written in fire and rain
that the truest poetry
survives
against all odds.
It outlives fear,
it has the robust health
of a milkmaid
and enough teeth in its smile
to ruin the hopes
of all the rodents in the world,
all of them put together.
Ode to My Joy
by Pablo Neruda
trans. by Ken Krabbenhoft
Joy,
green leaf
resting on the window sill,
tiny
brightness
newly born,
musical elephant,
dazzling
coin,
occasional
fragile gust of wind
but
more often
everlasting bread,
hope realized,
and duty properly done:
I scorned you, joy—
I was given bad advice.
The moon
lured me along its paths.
Ancient poets
lent me their glasses
and I drew a dark halo
around everything I saw,
a black crown on every flower,
a melancholy kiss
on each pair of beloved lips.
But there’s still time.
Let me make it up to you.
I thought
the bush caught up in the storm
had only to singe
my heart,
that rain had only to drench
my clothes
in the crimson land of mourning,
that if I closed
my eyes to the rose
and caressed the open wound,
suffering my share of everyone’s pain—
that only then was I aiding my fellow man.
In this I erred.
I had lost my way,
so today I call on you, joy.
You are
as necessary
as earth.
You warm
our hearths
like fire.
You are perfect,
like bread.
You are musical,
like the water of a river.
You make gifts of honey
circulating like a bee.
Joy.
I was a moody youth:
I found your mop of hair
shocking.
But when its abundance
showered down on my chest
I discovered it wasn’t true.
Today, joy,
I ran into you on the street,
far from any book.
Come with me:
I want to go with you
house to house,
I want to go from town to town,
flag to flag.
You aren’t just for me.
We will go to islands,
and seas.
We will go to mines,
and forests.
Not only will I be greeted
by solitary woodsmen,
poor washerwomen, or gruff and stately
stonecutters,
all of them bearing your bouquets:
there will also be crowds
and gatherings,
lumberjacks and longshoremen,
and brave boys
fighting their fight.
Around the world with you
and with my song!
With the star’s
winking flight
and the sea spray’s
delight!
I will deliver them all
because to all
I owe my joy.
Let no one question why I should want
to give the world’s wonders
to all mankind:
I learned the hard way
it's my earthly duty
to spread joy—
and I do this through my song.
Ode to Walt Whitman
by Pablo Neruda trans. by Greg Simon
the beard of a true fisherman,
the solemn supple gait
of his acacia legs.
I can’t recall my age, or if
I was in the vast streaming South,
or on some forbidding coastline
where seagulls wheeled & cried…
But I touched a hand that day,
& it was Walt Whitman’s hand.
And barefoot I walk the earth,
I wade through tenacious dew
in the grasslands of Whitman.
Passing among the soldiers—
his bardic silhouette.
Night nurse, camerado,
he knew painful, rasping breath,
& he waited with the dawn
for life’s silent return.
Throughout my entire childhood,
my companion was that hand
with dew on it, the timber
of its patriarchal pine,
the expanse of its prairie,
its mission of articulate peace.
And Walt did not disdain
all the gifts of the earth,
the capital’s surfeit of curves,
the purple initial of learning,
but taught me to be Americano,
& raised my eyes to books,
toward the treasure that we find
inside a kernel of wheat.
Engirthed by the clarity
of the plains, he made me see
how the high mountain tutors us.
From the subterranean echo
he fetched it all in for me,
whatever he could harvest
gallivanting through the alfalfa,
on the days he passed in the kitchen
or at the bend of the river.
But not just earth by itself
was brought into the light
by the work of his shovel:
he disinterred humanity.
And the slaves who were abased
along with him, balancing
the black dignity of their stature,
went on to conquer happiness.
To the stoker, down below
in boiler room, Walt sent
a basket of strawberries,
& each corner of his city
was visited by his verse,
verse like a strip of clean flesh,
Breadmaker supreme!
Prime old brother of my roots!
Cupola of the conifers!
For the last hundred years
the wind has passed over
your germinating grassland
without consuming your vision.
But now your country is cruel—
full of persecution, tears,
prisons & lethal weapons,
uncivil wars that nonetheless
haven’t crushed the grass of your book,
living source of originality.
And, ay!, those who murdered Lincoln,
who now lie in that bed,
have dismantled the fragrant
lilac of his memorial
& put a throne in its place,
splattered with blood & misfortune.
Your voice, that’s still singing
in the suburban stations, on
the unloading docks at night…
Your word, that’s still splashing
like dark water…
And your people, black white,
Poor & simple, like all people
still not forgetting
the tolling of your bell…
They congregate & sing
beneath the magnitude
of your spacious life.
They walk among the people
with your love. They caress
the pure development
of fraternity on earth.
Ode to a Village Movie Theater
by Pablo Neruda
Come, my love,
let's go to the movies
in the village.
Transparent night
turns
like a silent
mill, grinding out
stars.
We enter the
tiny theater, you and I,
a ferment of children
and the strong smell of apples.
Old movies
are
secondhand dreams.
The screen is the color
of stone, or rain.
The beautiful victim
of the villain
has eyes like pools
and a voice like a swan;
the fleetest
horses in the world
careen
at breakneck speed.
Cowboys
make
Swiss cheese of
the dangerous Arizona
moon.
Our hearts
in our mouths,
we thread our way
through
these
cyclones
of violence,
the death-defying
duel of the swordsmen in the tower,
unerring as wasps
the feathered avalanche
of Indians,
a spreading fan on the prairie.
Many of the
village
boys and girls
have fallen asleep,
tired after a day in the shop,
weary of scrubbing kitchens.
Not we,
my love,
we’ll not lose
even this one
dream;
as long
as we
live
we will claim
every minute
of reality,
but claim
dreams as well:
we
will dream
all the dreams.
Translated by Margaret Sayers Peden
Ode to a Stamp Album
by Pablo Neruda
Album of perfect stamps!
Butterflies,
ships,
sea shapes, corollas,
leaning towers,
dark eyes, moist and
round as grapes,
album
smooth
as
a
slippery
fish,
with thousands
of glistening
scales,
each page
a
racing
charger
in search of
distant pleasures, forgotten
flowers!
Other pages are
bonfires or carnations,
red clusters of stones
set afire
by a secret ruby,
some display
the snow,
the doves
of Norway,
the architectural clarity of the dew.
How was it possible
to bring
the paper
such beauty,
so many
expeditions
into infinity?
How
possible
to capture
the ineffable
glow
of
the Sambuca
butterfly
and its phosphorescent
caterpillar colonies,
and,
as well,
that
gentle
locomotive
puffing through pastures
like an
iron
bull,
small
but fiery,
and that
fauna from a distant sun,
elegant
wasps,
sea serpents,
incredible
camels?
World of miracles!
Insatiable
spiral,
comet’s tail
of all earth’s
highways,
dictionary
of the wind,
starstruck album
bulging
with noble
fruits and territories ,
treasure keeper
sailing
on its treasure,
garnet
pomegranate,
nomadic
stamp album!
Translated by Margaret Sayers Peden