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)

Photo source

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

Source

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