Start communicating
Neruda
"And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
I felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke free on the open sky."
Recent Village Updates
Login to find out
has added a new journalI'm Explaining a Few Things
You are going to ask: and where are the lilacs?
and the poppy-petalled metaphysics?
and the rain repeatedly spattering
its words and drilling them full
of apertures and birds?
I'll tell you all the news.
I lived in a suburb,
a suburb of Madrid, with bells,
and clocks, and trees.
From there you could look out
over Castille's dry face:
a leather ocean.
My house was called
the house of flowers, because in every cranny
geraniums burst: it was
a good-looking house
with its dogs and children.
Remember, Raul?
Eh, Rafel? Federico, do you remember
from under the ground
my balconies on which
the light of June drowned flowers in your mouth?
Brother, my brother!
Everything
loud with big voices, the salt of merchandises,
pile-ups of palpitating bread,
the stalls of my suburb of Arguelles with its statue
like a drained inkwell in a swirl of hake:
oil flowed into spoons,
a deep baying
of feet and hands swelled in the streets,
metres, litres, the sharp
measure of life,
stacked-up fish,
the texture of roofs with a cold sun in which
the weather vane falters,
the fine, frenzied ivory of potatoes,
wave on wave of tomatoes rolling down the sea.
And one morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings --
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
Bandits with planes and Moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
bandits with black friars spattering blessings
came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children's blood.
Jackals that the jackals would despise,
stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the vipers would abominate!
Face to face with you I have seen the blood
of Spain tower like a tide
to drown you in one wave
of pride and knives!
Treacherous
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken Spain :
from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers,
from every socket of Spain
Spain emerges
and from every dead child a rifle with eyes,
and from every crime bullets are born
which will one day find
the bull's eye of your hearts.
And you'll ask: why doesn't his poetry
speak of dreams and leaves
and the great volcanoes of his native land?
Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
The blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
In the streets!
Pablo Neruda
Login to find out
has added a new journalFor my part and yours, we comply, we share our hopes and winters;
and we have been wounded not only by mortal enemies
but by mortal friends; that seemed all the more bitter,
but bread does not taste sweeter, nor my verse in the meantime
living, we supply statistics that pain still lacks,
we go on loving love and in our blunt way
we bury the liars and live among the truth-tellers.
My love, night came down, galloping over the spread of the world.
My love, night erases all traces of the sea, the ships heel is at rest.
My love, the night lit up its starry institution.
To the place by the sleeping man, the woman glided in her wakefulness,
and in dreams the two descended the rivers which led to the weeping,
and grew once again among dark animals and trains loaded with shadows
to the point of being nothing more than pale stones at night.
It is time, love, to break off that sombre rose,
shut up the stars and bury the ash in the earth;
and, in the rising of the light, wake with those who awoke
or, go on in the dream, reaching the other shore of the sea which has no other shore.
From La Barcarola (1967)
Translated by,
Anthony Kerrigan
Login to find out
has added a new journalWe have lost even this twilight.
No one saw us this evening hand in hand
while the blue night dropped on the world.
I have seen from my window
the fiesta of sunset in the distant mountaintops.
Sometimes a piece of sun
burned like a coin between my hands.
I remembered you with my soul clenched
in that sadness of mine that you know.
Where were you then?
Who else was there?
Saying what?
Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly
when I am sad and feel you are far away?
The book fell that is always turned to at twilight
and my cape rolled like a hurt dog at my feet.
Always, always you recede through the evenings
towards where the twilight goes erasing statues.
-Pablo Neruda
Translated by: W.S. Merwin
malithegreat
:)
Login to find out
has added a new journalI almost thought in my sleep.
I almost dreamed in the dust,
in the falling rain of the dream.
I felt I had old teeth
as I fell asleep; perhaps
little by little I'm changing,
changing into a horse.
I caught the smell of the rough
grass, of the mountain ranges,
and I galloped toward water,
toward the four stormy
stations of the wind.
Good to be a horse
loose in the June night
close to Selva Negra
where the rivers run
tunnelling under the turf?
the air there runs a comb
along the horse's flanks
and the language of leaves
moves in the blood.
I galloped that night
without end or country, alone,
coursing through mud and wheat,
dreams and springwater.
I left behind like centuries
the corrugated forests,
the conversations of trees,
the greening of capitals,
the families of the soil.
I went back to my own region,
went back to not dreaming
on the street, to being
this grayish traveler
in the world of barbershops,
this me wearing shoes,
with hunger and spectacles,
who doesn't know where
he came from, who is lost,
who gets up in the morning
missing the meadow grass,
who goes to bed sightless
to dream without rain.
The minute they're not looking,
I leave for Renaico.
Login to find out
has added a new journalI am one of those who live
in the middle of the sea and close to the twilight,
a little beyond those stones.
When I came
and saw what was happening
I decided on the spot.
The day had spread itself
and everything was light
and the sea was beating
like a salty lion,
many-handed.
All that deserted space was singing
and I, lost and awed,
looking toward the silence,
opened my mouth and said:
"Mother of the foam,
expansive solitude,
here I will begin my rejoicing.
my particular poetry."
From then on I was never
let down by a single wave.
I always found the flavor of the sky
in the water, in the earth,
and the wood and the sea burned together
through the lonely winters.
I am grateful to the earth
for having waited
for me
when sky and sea came together
like two lips touching;
for that's no small thing, no??
to have lived
through one solitude to arrive at another,
to feel onself many things and recover wholeness.
I love all the things there are,
and of all fires
love is the only inexhaustible one;
and that's why I go from life to life,
from guitar to guitar,
and I have no fear
of light or of shade,
and almost being earth myself,
I spoon away at infinity.
So no one can ever fail
to find my doorless numberless house?
there between dark stones,
facing the flash
of the violent salt,
there we live, my woman and I,
there we take root.
Grant us help then.
Help us to be more of the earth each day!
Help us to be
more the sacred foam,
more the swish of the wave!
QalandarLal
ahhh haaaa'and I have no fear
of light or of shade,
and almost being earth myself,
I spoon away at infinity.'
beautiful