Pablo Neruda (1904-1973), whose real name is Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto, was born on 12 July, 1904, in the town of Parral in Chile. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1971.
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I never knew his work until a guy I met in the library attracted my attention by sending me letters (written in pencil), and also some poems. These two are my favorite.He was ... probably mentally ill. But I'm realizing now I have a pattern of falling for people who hear songs and voices in their heads and carry on down the road less traveled....
So here's to you Adam ... and your red pick-up truck held together with duct tape ... pots, pans, twigs, logs and sleeping bag tossed in the back, just in case a starry night called for an impromptu camp out.
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"I Crave Your Mouth"
I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
silent, starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disquiets me.
I search the liquid sound of your steps all day.
I hunger for your sleek laugh.
For your hands the color of wild grain,
I hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.
I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovliness,
The nose, the sovereign of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,
And I walk hungry, smelling the twilight
Looking for you, for your heart,
Like a puma in the barren wilderness.
If You Forget Me
I want you to know
one thing.
You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.
Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.
If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.
If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.
But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live
it will be in your arms
without leaving mine
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Comments
Thanks delia
Cat, I don't know that one. i know he did one about tomatoes and onions I thinks ... but I only know plums and William Carlos Williams ... will have to hunt around
Suzie, i never saw that movie but now I'm going to!!
by William Carlos Williams
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
Great choices Cindy!
M.a.h. -- I love that one best too -- happy to share it!
That's the one I was thinking of Suzanne -- don't think PN wrote about plums ...
Thanks Brie!
And yes, Truly, Madly Deeply is ... mmm, it's an admix of mad and truelove.
now, if you could just do something about these voices in my head (jk)
I am now reminded of the beauty of poetry again thanks to your
lovely post and many others . Love the Pablo!
ha! bri, are you sure 'bout that?
thanks for reading fireeyes and one
trig, i don't like most poetry -- don't even *get* it half the time. but then, i have my faves. and what is music? poetry set to music... thanks!
Evil one, neither fire nor hot vinegar
in a nest of volcanic witches, nor devouring ice,
nor the putrid turtle that barking and weeping
with the voice of dead woman scratches your belly
seeking a wedding ring and the toy of a slaughtered child,
will be for you anything but a dark demolished door.
Indeed.
From one hell to another, what difference? In the howling
of your legions, in the holy milk
of the mothers of Spain, in the milk and the bosoms trampled
along the roads, there is one more village, one more silence, a broken
door.
Here you are. Wretched eyelid, dung
of sinister sepulchral hens, heavy sputum, figure
of treason that blood will not erase. Who, who are you,
oh miserable leaf of salt, oh dog of the earth,
of ill-born pallor of shadow?
The flame retreats without ash,
the salty thirst of hell, the circles
of grief turn pale. Cursed one, may only humanstempt_c
pursue you, within the absolute fire of things may
you not be consumed, not be lost>
in the scale of time, may you not be pierced by the burning glass
or the
fierce foam. Alone, alone, for the tears
all gathered, for an eternity of dead hands
and rotted eyes, alone in a cave bosch.jpg
of your hell, eating silent pus and blood
through a cursed and lonely eternity. You do not deserve to sleep
even though it be with your eyes fastened with pins:
you have to be
awake, General, eternally awake
among the putrefacation of the new mothers,
machine-gunned in the autumn. All and all the sad children cut to
pieces,
rigid, they hang, awaiting in your hell
that day of cold festivity: your arrival.
Children blackened by explosions,
red fragments of brain, corridors filled
with gentle intestines, they all await you, all in the very posture
of crossing the street, of kicking the ball,
of swallowing a fruit, of smiling, or being born.
Smiling. There are smiles
now demolished by blood
that wait with scattered exterminated teeth
and masks of muddled matter, hollow faces
of perpetual gunpowder, and the nameless
ghosts, the dark
hidden ones, those who never left
their beds of rubble. They all wait for you
to spend the night. They fill the corridors
like decayed seaweed.
They are ours, they were our
flesh, our health, our baby-sleep
bustling peace, our ocean
of air and lungs. Through
them the dry earth flowered. Now, beyond the earth,
turned into destroyed
substance, murdered matter, dead flour,
they await you in your hell.
hell
Since acute terror or sorrow waste away,
neither terror nor sorrow awaits you. May you be alone and accursed,
alone and awake among all the dead,
and let blood fall upon you like rain,
and let a dying river of severed eyes
slide and flow over you staring at you endlessly.
Pablo Neruda, General Franco in Hell translated by Richard Schaaf.
thanks ginny and arianna
and i'd love to see your choices oderoulette
wellll.... which part, the voices, or wishing you could fall for me?
the voices...all i usually hear is my own, sometimes Mommie dearest ("No! go AWAY!" I respond), my secret love, or a mentor...those last ones keep me honest and true, mostly.
I'm athinkin' that it would be very boring with no voices at all...
All three seem to reach in through (y)our chest and just rip out the feelings, don't they?
Peece!
David
poetry is usually small doses for me Jime, and alas, i only know English. but I love to hear other languages, which is why i love going to foreign readings if ever the chance comes up (not often).