my soul is not at peace with having lost her.
Though this may be the final sorrow she causes me,
and these the last verses I write for her.
—From Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada (1924). Translated by Mark Eisner in The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems, City Lights Books, 2004.
Walking Around
Comes a time I’m tired of being a man.
Comes a time I check out the tailor’s or the movies
shriveled, impenetrable, like a felt swan
launched into waters of origin and ashes.
A whiff from the barber shops has me wailing.
All I want is a break from rocks and wool,
all I want is to see neither buildings nor gardens,
no shopping centers, no bifocals, no elevators.
Comes a time I’m tired of my feet and my fingernails
and my hair and my shadow.
Comes a time I’m tired of being a man.
Yet how delicious it would be
to shock a notary with a cut lily
or to kill off a nun with a blow to the ear.
How beautiful
to run through the streets with a green knife,
howling until I died of cold.
I don’t want to go on like a root in the shadows,
hesitating, feeling forward, trembling with dream,
down down into the dank guts of the earth,
soaking it up and thinking, eating every day.
I don’t want for myself so many misfortunes.
I don’t want to keep on as root and tomb,
alone, subterranean, in a vault stuffed with corpses,
frozen stiff, dying of shame.
That’s why Monday burns like kerosene
when it sees me show up with my mugshot face,
and it shrieks on its way like a wounded wheel,
trailing hot bloody footprints into the night.
And it shoves me into certain corners, certain damp houses,
into hospitals where bones sail out the window,
into certain shoe stores reeking of vinegar,
into streets godawful as crevices.
There are sulfur-colored birds and horrific intestines
adorning the doors of houses I hate,
there are dentures dropped in a coffeepot,
mirrors
that must have bawled with shame and terror,
there are umbrellas everywhere, poisons and belly buttons.
I pass by peaceably, with eyes, with shoes,
with fury and forgetting,
I cruise the offices and orthopedic stores,
and patios where clothes hang from a wire,
where underwear, towels and blouses cry drawn out, obscene tears.
—From Residencia en la tierra II (1933). Translated by Forrest Gander in The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems, City Lights Books, 2004.
The Heights of Macchu Picchu: XII
Rise up and be born with me, brother.
From the deepest reaches of your
disseminated sorrow, give me your hand.
You will not return from the depths of rock.
You will not return from subterranean time.
It will not return, your hardened voice.
They will not return, your drilled-out eyes.
Look at me from the depths of the earth,
plowman, weaver, silent shepherd:
tender of the guardian guanacos:
mason of the impossible scaffold:
water-bearer of Andean tears:
goldsmith of crushed fingers:
farmer trembling on the seed:
potter poured out into your clay:
bring all your old buried sorrows
to the cup of this new life.
Show me your blood and your furrow,
say to me: here I was punished
because the gem didn’t shine or the earth
didn’t deliver the stone or the grain on time:
point out to me the rock on which you fell
and the wood on which they crucified you,
burn the ancient flints bright for me,
the ancient lamps, the lashing whips
stuck for centuries to your wounds
and the axes brilliant with bloodstain.
I come to speak through your dead mouth.
Through the earth unite all
the silent and split lips
and from the depths speak to me all night long
as if we were anchored together,
tell me everything, chain by chain,
link by link and step by step,
sharpen the knives you kept,
place them in my chest and in my hand,
like a river of yellow lightning,
like a river of buried jaguars,
and let me weep, hours, days, years,
blind ages, stellar centuries.
Give me silence, water, hope.
Give me struggle, iron, volcanoes.
Fasten your bodies to mine like magnets.
Come to my veins and my mouth.
Speak through my words and my blood.
—From Canto general (1950). Translated by Mark Eisner in collaboration with John Felstiner and Stephen Kessler in The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems, City Lights Books, 2004.
Ode to Wine
Wine color of day,
wine color of night,
wine with your feet of purple
or topaz blood,
wine,
starry child
of the earth,
wine, smooth
as a golden sword,
soft
as ruffled velvet,
wine spiral-shelled
and suspended,
loving,
marine,
you’ve never been contained in one glass,
in one song, in one man,
choral, you are gregarious,
and, at least, mutual.
Sometimes
you feed on mortal
memories,
on your wave
we go from tomb to tomb,
stonecutter of icy graves,
and we weep
transitory tears,
but
your beautiful
spring suit
is different,
the heart climbs to the branches,
the wind moves the day,
nothing remains
in your motionless soul.
Wine
stirs the Spring,
joy grows like a plant,
walls, boulders,
fall,
abysses close up,
song is born.
Oh thou, jug of wine, in the desert
with the delightful woman I love,
said the old poet.
Let the pitcher of wine
add its kiss to the kiss of love.
My love, suddenly
your hip
is the curve of the wineglass
filled to the brim,
your breast is the cluster,
your hair the light of alcohol,
your nipples, the grapes
your navel pure seal
stamped on your barrel of a belly,
and your love the cascade
of unquenchable wine,
the brightness that falls on my senses,
the earthen splendor of life.
But not only love,
burning kiss,
or ignited heart—
you are, wine of life,
also
fellowship, transparency,
chorus of discipline,
abundance of flowers.
I love the light of a bottle
of intelligent wine
upon a table
when people are talking,
that they drink it,
that in each drop of gold
or ladle of purple,
they remember
that autumn toiled
until the barrels were full of wine,
and let the obscure man learn,
in the ceremony of his business,
to remember the earth and his duties,
to propagate the canticle of the fruit.
—From Odas elementales (1954). Translated by Mark Eisner in The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems, City Lights Books, 2004.
Appendix II
On the Importance of Poetry in Chile
Poetry has been woven into the cultural history of Chile for centuries, giving Neruda a unique and advantageous foundation as a writer. The quality of his mentors, including teachers in his school; the opportunities to publish; the competitions in distant towns—all were products of this environment, and poetry’s stature in Chilean culture continued to provide momentum throughout his development. When he moved to Santiago at age sixteen,
