Ode to Salt

Greetings, Internet!
I'm a student at Westminster College, finishing up my last semester before student teaching in the spring! This blog is a way for me to share with the world some lovely poems that I may someday use in my classroom. Over the next few weeks I'll share ten poems by Pablo Neruda, a Chilean poet, fiction writer, and activist. All of the poems I will share are translated to English. Most of the translations are done by A.S. Kline. Translation of poetry is a difficult and intricate process - the poem inevitably changes as it shifts from one language to another, often leaving behind idioms, innuendoes, and connotations, and taking on new ones. It is the duty of the translator to retain as much of the beauty and craft of the original text as possible. In the poems I post here, I believe the translator has succeeded in preserving Neruda's haunting simplicity and clear imagery. I'm starting with the poem from which I've derived the title of my blog: Ode to Salt. Enjoy!

Photo courtesy of Dawn Endico

Ode to Salt

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. 

-Pablo Neruda