PABLO NERUDA ~

 from Ode to Walt Whitman

Without

disdain

for the gifts

of the earth,

the capital's

abundant curves,

or the purple

initial

of wisdom,

you

taught me

to be an American,

you lifted my eyes

to books,

toward

the treasure

of the grain:

broad poet,

across the

clarity

of the plains,

you made me see

the high mountain

as my guardian.

translated from the Spanish 

by Martin Espada

___________________________

Pablo Neruda

PABLO NERUDA ~

 from  The Book of Questions 

Why don't the immense airplanes

fly around with their children?

Which yellow bird

fills its nest with lemons?

Why don't they train helicopters

to suck honey from the sunlight?

Where did the full moon leave

its sack of flour tonight?

Is it true that voluptuous crocodiles

live only in Australia?

How do the oranges divide up

sunlight in the orange tree?

Did salt's teeth come

from a bitter mouth?

Is it true that a black condor

flies at night over my country?

Whom can I ask what I came

to make happen in this world?

Why do I move without wanting to,

why am I not able to sit still?

Why do I go rolling without wheels,

flying without wings or feathers,

and why did I decide to migrate

if my bones live in Chile?

And why is the sun such a bad companion

to the traveler's in the desert?

And why is the sun so congenial

in the hospital garden?

Are they birds or fish

in these nets of moonlight?

Was it where they lost me

that I finally found myself?

Why was I not born mysterious?

Why did I grow up without companions?

Who ordered me to tear down

the doors of my own pride?

And who went out to live for me

when I was sleeping or sick?

And which flag unfurled there

where they didn't forget me?

Can you love me, syllabary,

and give me a meaningful kiss?

Is a dictionary a sepulchre

or a sealed honeycomb?

In which window did I remain

watching buried time?

Or is what I see from afar

what I have not yet lived?

_________________________

Pablo Neruda

The Book of Questions

translated by William O'Daly

Copper Canyon Press, 2001

THE COMPLETE MEMOIRS (NERUDA) ~

 

R E A D     M E

PABLO NERUDA~

 

Is the sea there? Tell it to come in.

Bring me

the great bell, one of the green race.

Not that one, the other one, the one that has

a crack in its bronze mouth,

and now, nothing more, I want to be alone

with my essential sea and the bell.

I don't want to speak for a long time,

silence! I still want to learn,

I want to know if I exist.

______________________

PABLO NERUDA

translated by William O'Daly 

THE SEA AND THE BELLS

Copper Canyon Press 2002

PABLO NERUDA ~

R E A D     M E

City Lights

2017

PABLO NERUDA ~

R E A D      M E

Ecco

2018

IN THESE TIMES ~

In These Times


Happy New Year . . . Today you who have

my land on both sides of you, how happy you are, brother.

I am the wandering child of all that I love.

Answer me, imagine that I am with you,

asking you, imagine that I am with you,

asking you, imagine that I am that January wind,

Puelche wind, ancient wind of the mountains

that when you open the door visits you

entering, airing its swift questions.

Tell me, have you gone into a field of wheat or barley,

is it golden?  Speak to me of a day of plums.

Far from Chile I think of a day, circular,

purple, transparent, of sugar in clusters,

and of thick blueberries dripping

into my mouth, their cups filled with delight.

Tell me, did you bite into the pure flank

of a peach today, filling yourself with immortal ambrosia,

until you too became the fountain of the earth,

fruit and fruit arriving in splendor to the world?



———————————

Pablo Neruda
Canto General
song of the Americas
translated by Mariela Griffon
Tupelo Press, 2016

THE LOST NERUDA POEMS ~

1.



I touch your feet in the shade, your hands in the light,

and on the flight your peregrine eyes guide me

Matilde, with kisses your mouth taught me

my lips came to know fire.

Oh legs bequeathed the creaminess of perfect

oats, the battle spread,

its heart a meadow,

when I pressed my ears to your breasts,

my blood pounded out your Araucan syllable.





11.



If they put

a boat

near a Chilean,

he jumps in,

he exiles himself

and is lost.

The rich man

heads to Vesuvius,

and won't face

the maternal

heights, the high

Andean flame,

he flies to Broadway,

to the Mayo Clinic,

to the Moulin Rouge,

the poor

Chileno, with his only

shoes

crosses into Neuquen, the

forsaken territories of Patagonia,

he likes the lunary

shorelines of Peru,

he sets his hunger down

in Colombia,

migrates as he can,

changing stars like shirts,

the Chilean

is a crazy woman

with mutinous eyes,

an amiable heart, sky-blue skin

or he's the traveling salesman

with his wine, guitars,

water pipes

or he could be the sailor

who gets married

in Veracruz and never comes back

to his island,

to his fragrant oceanic Chiloe.





16.



Spring day,

a long Chilean day,

a long green lizard

lazing

on the amphitheater of snow

facing the navy blue.

Sun and water against

your green skin,

the resuscitated land

breathes behind your shield,

nodding off,

you lose your grip

but recover,

the pollen

stains you

red,

the cicadas

buzz by,

a bird

aims its bill at you,

you go on fully alive,



a fragrant

green creature

with a golden tail,



you give

and take sustenance,



you sing

and we sing of you,

sleepy

clear day

and you aren't even aware

that meantime

yellow beetles

are scrambling

up your head,

and violins

are taking wing

in your wind,

you don't know

who dies today,

you don't recognize

the mourners

trailing the cortege,

you don't know, can't conceive

of those evicted from their homes

last night, the woman

who lost her job,

the ring

slipping from the fingers

of the mother

as it clangs in the pawnbroker's drawer

like a lost cricket dying,

at ease

among so many

births,

the hub

of germinations,

attentive

in the wispy

spring of Chile,

you take it easy,

superb,

the sea's froth

like a sacred robe

nears and falls back

from your body,

and

the sky crowns you,

the ocean's chorus

etches into stone the song

of your praises,

among spiny thorns

of the cactus, the corolla burns,

the world is born again.



In the motherland of Chile

in spring

the voice,

the irregular theogony,

a bright abundance,

from green days lazing in the snow,

I draw out

this one day,

its face to the sea salt.



_________________________

P A B L O     N E R U D A
F O R R E S T    G A N D E R


Then Come Back
The Lost Neruda Poems

Copper Canyon Press 2016

ODE ~

Pablo Neruda

Ode to the First Day of the Year
Oda al Primer dia del ano



We identify it
as if
it were
a wooden horse
different from
all horses.
We adorn
its forehead
with a ribbon,
we hang
on its neck colorful rattles,
and at midnight
we get ready to receive it
as if it were
an explorer descending from a star.

The way bread resembles
yesterday's bread,
a ring all rings:
the days
blink
clearly, jingling, fleetingly,
and lie down in the dark night.

I see the last
day
of this
year
on a train, toward the rains
of a distant purple archipelago,
and the man
on the machine,
complicated like a clock from heaven,
lowering his eyes
to the infinite
ruler of the rails,
to the shining handles,
to the nimble bonds of fire.

Of conductor of trains
accelerating
toward the black
stations of the night,
this end
of the year,
without wife or children,
is it not the same for the one gone, the one coming?
From the roads
and workshops,
the first day, the first dawn
of the starting year,
has the same rusty
color as the iron train:
and people along the way
greet it,
cows, villages,
the vapor of the first light of day,
without knowing
it is
the year's door,
a day
heralded
by bells,
adorned with plumes and carnations.

The earth
does not
know it:
it will receive
that golden
day, gray, heavenly,
it will extend it over hills,
it will wet it with
arrows
of translucent
rain,
and then
it will curl it
in a tube,
will store it in the shadows.
It is thus, but
a small
door of hope,
new year's day,
although you are
like the bread
of all breads,
we will live you in a different way,
we will eat you, flower you,
wait for you.
We will place you
like a cake
in our lives,
we will light you
like candelabra,
we will drink you
as if
you were a topaz.
New
Year's
Day,
electric day, fresh,
all the leaves
emerge green
from
the trunk of time.

Crown us
with
water,
with open
jasmine,
with all the aromas
deployed,
yes,
even though
you're
only
a day,
a poor
human day,
your halo
beats
over so many
tired
hearts,
and you are,
oh new
day,
oh forthcoming cloud,
bread unseen before,
permanent
tower!


P A B L O   N E R U D A
translated by Ilan Stavans



____________________

All the Odes
Pablo Neruda
edited by Ilan Stavans
Farrar 2013

I HAVE A DREAM ~

Martin Luther King, Jr.
March on Washinton 
Aug 28, 1963

Salvador Allende & Pablo Neruda

Victor Jara

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175741/tomgram%3A_ariel_dorfman%2C_martin_luther_king_and_the_two_9_11s/#more









http://www.naacp.org/pages/king?source=BSDAds_GoogleSearch_Martin%20Luther%20King_Dream_I%20Have%20a%20Dream%20Speech_Phrase_13683507433&gclid=CMqCkNT8pLkCFQya4AodYQsAOw

 

 

NERUDA ~

For Neruda, For Allende, For Chile, For All



Don Pablo it's strange and noble
as the Spanish language
is strange and noble, and it's
Surrealistic in that wild Spanish
style extending back to "Don Quixote".


I have loved your work for years,
and admired you as a human entity,
but within the past month I've found
that the available translations
of your work are slipshod, and while
working furiously, (35 poems in 29 days),


there occurred the heart-stopping coup
of the Fascists in your country, and
the murder of your President, Senor Allende.


I have been planning this letter
for a few weeks to tell you that I now
love you as a man, and as a poet,
and I'm told it's too late: you "died"
three-or-four days ago, of "cancer",
while in "Protective Custody".
They will probably burn your books.


Don Pablo, I know that as a translator
of English literary works, you had
knowledge of how badly your own work
had been mistreated.


(The money rustles, the trees droop,
the crepuscular fading happens,
the rats work incessantly,
the rivers polluted and the indians,
the copper and the nitrate
once again accepted
by the powers of sustenance)
, and you are with Vallejo,
with Lorca, with Jimenez.


You are dead of politics and I have
finished "Estravagario" and
"Las Piedras De Chile". Now I begin
on "Plenos Poderes", on the grapes,
the ice, the stones, the enigmas.


Childlike and playful as you,
I will hold up my hand
like the boy with his hare
on the highway.  In the dark.


                                        9 / 27/ 73


__________________

DAN PROPPER
The Tale of the Amazing Tramp
(Cherry Valley Editions 1977)








http://www.fundacionneruda.org/