This last poem focuses on a speaker who is profoundly unhappy with himself and his environment. The descriptions make you want to crawl out of your own skin, just as the speaker evidently wishes to do. Materialism, apathy, madness...this one's a mine of juicy topics.

Walking Around

                              From: ‘Residencia en la tierra II’

                                       

It so happens I’m tired of being a man.

It so happens I enter clothes shops and movie-houses,

withered, impenetrable, like a swan made of felt

sailing the water of ashes and origins.

The smell of a hairdresser’s has me crying and wailing.

I only want release from being stone or wool.

I only want not to see gardens and businesses,

merchandise, spectacles, lifts.

It so happens I’m tired of my feet and toenails,

my hair and my shadow.

It so happens I’m tired of being a man.

Still it would be a pleasure

to scare a lawyer with a severed lily

or deal death to a nun with a poke in the ear.

It would be good

to go through the streets with an emerald knife

and shout out till I died of cold.

I don’t want to go on being just a root in the shadows,

vacillating, extended, shivering with dream,

down in the damp bowels of earth,

absorbing it, thinking it, eating it every day.

I don’t want to be so much misfortune,

I don’t want to go on as a root or a tomb,

a subterranean tunnel, just a cellar of death,

frozen, dying in pain.

This is why, Monday, the day, is burning like petrol,

when it sees me arrive with my prison features,

and it screeches going by like a scorched tire

and its footsteps tread hot with blood towards night.

And it drives me to certain street corners, certain damp houses,

towards hospitals where skeletons leap from the window,

to certain cobbler’s shops stinking of vinegar,

to alleyways awful as abysses.

There are sulphur-coloured birds and repulsive intestines,

hanging from doorways of houses I hate,

there are lost dentures in coffee pots

there are mirrors

that ought to have cried out from horror and shame,

there are umbrellas everywhere, poisons and navels.

I pass by calmly, with eyes and shoes,

with anger, oblivion,

pass by, cross through offices, orthopaedic stores,

and yards where clothes hang down from wires:

underpants, towels, and shirts, that cry

slow guilty tears.

-Pablo Neruda

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This poem is about the figurehead of a ship. Like with salt and the bricklayer, in this ode Neruda takes something relatively commonplace and finds great artistic potential in it.

‘The little girl made of timber didn’t arrive by walking:’

LXVIII  From: ‘Cien sonetos de amor’

(Figurehead from a ship)

The little girl made of timber didn’t arrive by walking:

there she was, all of a sudden, sitting among the cobbles,

ancient flowers, of the sea, were a coronet on her forehead,

her gaze was filled by deep rooted sadness.

There she rested, gazing, at our empty existence,

the doing, and being, and going, and coming, all over Earth,

and day was discolouring its measure of petals.

She watched us, without seeing, the girl-child of timber.

The girl-child who was crowned by the ancient waters,

sat there gazing, with eyes overwhelmed:

she knew we are living in a distant trawl-net,

of time, and water, and waves, and sounds, and rain,

and don’t know if we’re beings, or if we are her dreaming.

This is the fable of the girl who’s made of timber.

-Pablo Neruda

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Poetry

As I've been honing my skills as an amateur poet in Creative Writing this semester, I've learned just how baffling the poetry writing process can be. The poem might start as an idea, an impression, or an overwhelming feeling. I once decided to write a poem based on two words that sounded pretty together. A poem can come from anywhere and everywhere at once, but once you decide to write it down, you have to commit to working hard, laboring over each word, and revising until you've done the poem justice. The words may come easily at first, but without skill, practice, and revision, it's going to feel sloppy. *Steps down from soapbox.* Anyway, here's a poem about poetry.

Poetry

And it was at that age ... Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names,
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire,
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind. 

Pablo Neruda

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Neruda must have known some moody ladies! Here's another moving love poem, this time about a lover who keeps the speaker at a distance, which seems to him as wide and deep as the sea.

‘Leaning into the afternoon’

VII From:’ Veinte poemas de amor’

Leaning into the afternoon, I cast my saddened nets,

towards your oceanic eyes.

There, in the highest fire, my solitude unrolls and ignites,

arms flailing like a drowning man’s.

I send out crimson flares across your distant eyes,

that swell like the waves, at the base of a lighthouse.

You only guard darkness, far-off woman of mine,

from your gaze the shore of trepidation sometimes emerges.

Leaning towards afternoon, I fling my saddened nets,

into the sea, your eyes of ocean trouble.

The night-birds peck at the early stars,

that glitter as my soul does, while it loves you.

The night gallops, on its mare of shadows,

spilling blue silken tassels of corn, over the fields.

- Pablo Neruda

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I Can Write the Saddest Lines Tonight

The vastness of the speaker's loneliness and sense of loss in this poem is reflected by the description of the all-encompassing, "fractured" night. It's gorgeous. Just enjoy:

I can write the saddest lines tonight

   

I can write the saddest lines tonight.

Write for example: «The night is fractured

and they shiver, blue, those stars, in the distance».

The night wind turns in the sky and sings.

I can write the saddest lines tonight.

I loved her, sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like these I held her in my arms.

I kissed her greatly under the infinite sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.

How could I not have loved her huge, still eyes.

I can write the saddest lines tonight.

To think I don’t have her, to feel I have lost her.

Hear the vast night, vaster without her.

Lines fall on the soul like dew on the grass.

What does it matter that I couldn’t keep her.

The night is fractured and she is not with me.

That is all. Someone sings far off. Far off,

my soul is not content to have lost her.

As though to reach her, my sight looks for her.

My heart looks for her: she is not with me

The same night whitens, in the same branches.

We, from that time, we are not the same.

I don’t love her, that’s certain, but how I loved her.

My voice tried to find the breeze to reach her.

Another’s kisses on her, like my kisses.

Her voice, her bright body, infinite eyes.

I don’t love her, that’s certain, but perhaps I love her.

Love is brief: forgetting lasts so long.

Since, on these nights, I held her in my arms,

my soul is not content to have lost her.

Though this is the last pain she will make me suffer,

and these are the last lines I will write for her.

(translated by A.S. Kline)

And here's a video of Andy Garcia reading a different translation of the poem!

If You Forget Me

If my fiancée dumped me and forgot about me, I don't think I'd have an easy time getting over it, as the speaker in this poem claims he would. But perhaps he only says this to protect himself from pain. He describes his love in the most beautiful and inspired terms! Check it out, and then listen to Madonna read it.

"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 loveing 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.

-Pablo Neruda

Ode to the Gentle Bricklayer

Pay attention to the length of the lines of this poem. They are very short, some only a word long. This draws out the poem, making it longer and slower, like the work of the bricklayer. I think this might be part of the lesson the speaker learns!

Ode to the Gentle Bricklayer

The bricklayer

laid out

his bricks.

He mixed the lime, working

it with sand.

Unhurried, silent,

he performed his task,

setting up the ladder,

leveling

the cement.

Rounded shoulders, eyebrows

above serious eyes.

Deliberate, he came

and went in his work,

and beneath his hand

his creation

grew.

Plaster covered walls,

a column

thrust skyward,

a roof

forestalled the fury

of an angry sun.

Back and forth went

the bricklayer

his gentle

hands

working

his materials.

And by the end

of

the week,

the columns and the

arch,

children of

lime, sand,

wisdom and hands,

celebrated

simplicity, sold

and cool.

Ah, what a lesson

I learned

from the gentle bricklayer!

-Pablo Neruda

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Larynx

My roommate read me this poem out of her textbook for a course she's taking called Medical Visions in Literature. We're some of those strange people who read each other poetry for fun. This one is honest and humorous while looking at the heavy and mysterious topic of death.

Larynx

Now this is it, said Death,

and as far as I could see

Death was looking at me, at me.

This all happened in hospital,

in washed out corridors,

and the doctor peered at me

with periscopic eyes.

He stuck his head in my mouth,

scratched away at my larynx --

perhaps a small seed

of death was stuck there.

At first, I turned into smoke

so that the cindery one

would pass and not recognize me.

I played the fool, I grew thin,

pretended to be simple or transparent --

I wanted to be a cyclist

to pedal out of death’s range.

Then rage came over me

and I said, “Death, you bastard,

Haven’t you enough with all those bones?

I’ll tell you exactly what I think:

you have no discrimination, you’re deaf

and stupid beyond belief.

“Why are you following me?

What do you want with my skeleton?

Why don’t you take the miserable one,

the bitter, the unfaithful, the ruthless,

the murderer, the adulterers,

the two-faced judge,

the deceiving journalist,

tyrants from islands,

those who set fire to mountains,

the chiefs of police,

jailers and burglars?

Why do you have to take me?

What business have I with Heaven?

Hell doesn’t suit me --

I feel fine on the earth.”

With such internal mutterings

I kept myself going

while the restless doctor

went tramping through my lungs,

from bronchea to bronchea

like a bird from branch to branch.

I couldn’t feel my throat;

my mouth was open like the jaws of a suit of armor,

and the doctor ran up and down

my larynx on his bicycle,

till, serious and certain,

he looked at me through his telescope

and pried me loose from death.

It wasn’t what they thought.

It wasn’t my turn.

If I tell you I suffered a lot,

and really loved the mystery,

that Our Lord and Our Lady

were waiting for me in their oasis,

if I talk of enchantment,

and being eaten up by distress

at not being close to dying,

if I say like a stupid chicken

that I die by not dying,

give me a boot in the butt,

fit punishment for a liar.

-Pablo Neruda

(translated by Alastair Reid)

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Sonnet 17

Today's poem is Neruda's Sonnet XVII. It is one of the most gorgeous love poems I've ever read. Not overly sentimental, not trite or insincere. It creates a picture of an intimacy that sustains. The speaker does not need dazzling romantic displays. This love is secretly powerful, and incredibly deep. Just read, enjoy, and savor the quiet passion of this sonnet.

Sonnet XVII

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep. 

-Pablo Neruda

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