Poem — Pablo Neruda

Chapter 1, from The Heights of Macchu Picchu
by Pablo Neruda (translated by Nathaniel Tarn)

From air to air, like an empty net,
dredging through streets and ambient atmosphere, I came
lavish, at autumn's coronation, with the leaves'
proffer of currency and — between spring and wheat ears —
that which a boundless love, caught in a gauntlet fall,
grants us like a long-fingered moon.

(Days of live radiance in discordant
bodies: steels converted
to the silence of acid:
nights disentangled to the ultimate flour,
assaulted stamens of the nuptial land.)

Someone waiting for me among the violins
met with a world like a buried tower
sinking its spiral below the layered leaves
color of raucous sulphur:
and lower yet, in a vein of gold,
like a sword in a scabbard of meteors,
I plunged a turbulent and tender hand
to the most secret organs of the earth.

Leaning my forehead through unfathomed waves
I sank, a single drop, within a sleep of sulphur
where, like a blind man, I retraced the jasmine
of our exhausted human spring.

Del aire al aire, como una red vacia,
iba yo entre las calles y la atmósfera, llegando y despidiendo,
en el advenimiento del otoño la moneda extendida
de las hojas, y, entre la primavera y las espigas,
lo que el más grande amor, como dentro de un guante
que cae, nos entrega comon una larga luna.

(Días de fulgor vivo en la intemperie
de los cuerpos: aceros convertidos
al silencio del ácido:
noches deshilachadas hasta la última harina:
estambres agredidos de la patria nupcial.)

Alguien que me esperó entre los violines
encontró un mundo como una torre enterrada
hundiendo su espiral más abajo de todas
las hojas de color de ronco azufre:
más abajo, en el ero de la geoligía,
como una espada envuelta en meteoros,
hundí la mano turbulenta y dulce
en lo más genital de lo terrestre.

Puse la frente entre las olas profundas,
descendí como gota entra la paz sulfúrica,
y, como un ciego, regresé al jazmin
de la gastada primavera humana.

UPDATE (2007-01-31 13:44EST): A Neruda meme has gotten underway. Sylvia started it, I ran with it, and now it's rolling along on its own. Ah, the wonders of the blogosphere. Here's the sequence (and I'll try to keep this list updated; Sylvia is tracking the meme here):

The Anti-Essentialist Conundrum

Truly Outrageous

Rien d'extraordinaire si ce n'est le quotidien

Having Read The Fine Print

Angry Brown Butch

Slant Truth

brown rab girl fish

The Gimp Parade

Vox ex Machina

Comments

[Sylvia]

Reading poetry during classtime shuts down my brain in a bad academic way but in a good thinking way -- to put it in terms of the conversation in my blog. You can literally lose yourself in this stanza alone:

Someone waiting for me among the violins
met with a world like a buried tower
sinking its spiral below the layered leaves
color of raucous sulphur:
and lower yet, in a vein of gold,
like a sword in a scabbard of meteors,
I plunged a turbulent and tender hand
to the most secret organs of the earth.

And I have seen not one justice quote it in the court opinions. It's ridiculous. ;)

[Kai]

Sylvia, that stanza is absolutely breathtaking, the first time I read it I think I jumped out of my chair, ran about the room for a moment, then flopped to the floor and lay motionless for a few minutes (with maybe a few grunts thrown in). That's some intense stuff, to be imbibed with caution. :-D

[Blackamazon]

Okay Neruda is dangerous.

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 infinitude.

if you don't have your fingers playing over your lips at some point during the ode to salt. I really have no idea what to do with you

[Kai]

Yay! Blackamazon joins in the Neruda-fest! Actually BA I never read that one before...and yes I had to lick my lips and swallow a couple of times as I read it. The guy can turn a phrase, can't he? ;-D

[Sylvia]

The madness is spreading. :)

[Sylvia]

Note #2: It's turning into a no-holds-barred Nuyorican, Latin American, and Spanish poetry meme... :D

[Jon]

Another for your list here and also here.

Hi wassup my name is bjofr i am 98 years old ok