You will ask: And where are the lilacs?
And the metaphysics laced with poppies?
And the rain that often beat
his words filling them
with holes and birds?
I’ll tell you everything that’s happening with me.
I lived in a neighborhood
of Madrid, with church bells,
with clocks, with trees.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
My house was called
the house of flowers, because everywhere
geraniums were exploding: it was
a beautiful house
with dogs and little kids.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Federico, you remember,
from under the earth,
do you remember my house with balconies on which
the light of June drowned flowers in your mouth?
¡Hermano, hermano!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
And one morning everything was burning
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
and ever since then fire,
gunpowder ever since,
and ever since then blood.
Bandits with airplanes and with Moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
bandits with black friars making blessings,
. . . kept coming from the sky to kill children,
and through the streets the blood of the children
ran simply, like children’s blood.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
You will ask why his poetry
doesn’t speak to us of dreams, of the leaves,
of the great volcanoes of his native land?
Come and see the blood in the streets,
come and see
the blood in the streets,
come and see the blood
in the streets!
Chapter Thirteen
I Picked a Road
I have the same wounded hand as man,
I hold the same red cup
and equal furious amazement:
one day
throbbing with human
dreams, a wild
grain appeared
in my devouring night
to join my wolf’s steps
to the steps of man.
And so, reunited,
harshly central, I seek no asylum
in the hollows of tears: I carry
the bees’ bloodline: radiant bread
for the son of man: in the mystery blue prepares itself
to look upon wheat distanced from blood.
—“Meeting Under New Flags”
As the war’s violent chaos intensified, Neruda took his family out of Spain, to Marseille. The consulate there was being used as a base for many members of the Chilean diplomatic corps who had been displaced by the civil war in Spain. He then took his wife and daughter about 140 miles east to Monte Carlo, where he hoped they’d be safer. He left them there and returned to Marseille. Delia had fled Madrid as well and was now in Barcelona. On December 10, 1936, Neruda wrote to her:
I don’t want anything except for you to come, I feel lonely, this morning I washed my entire body in a hotel bidet, I have cut my fingernails for the first time alone, and in spite of the difficulties, it is so good to be without Maruca: I felt myself living again . . .
I embrace you with all my heart and I love you every day, I hope and wait to see you, that’s the only thing I want. Pablo.
Neruda wrote to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, asking if he could be reassigned to Marseille, but instead he was told to return to Chile. The Spanish Civil War was creating tension within Chile’s diplomatic corps, under the administration of President Arturo Alessandri, who had grown more conservative through his reliance on right-wing support. Many in the corps were pro-Franco, including Carlos Morla Lynch. When the Spanish Republic’s seat in the League of Nations had come up for a vote, Chile had voted against the Republic. The Right saw Neruda as a loose cannon.
But Neruda wasn’t ready to give up the fight in Europe just yet. At the beginning of 1937, he met Delia in Paris, hoping to deliver a tribute to Lorca while he was there. Neruda was conscious enough of the political sensitivities to ask for permission from his superior, Tulio Maquieira, to give the talk. From Marseille, Maquieira sent a diplomatic explanation of his disapproval:
My dear friend:
I was greatly happy to hear the good news you sent me about your little girl. I am also happy that your financial efforts are coming to fruition.
. . . There are discussions of whether your poet friend is still alive. You say the latter [that he is dead]. Fine. But in that case, García Lorca will be perceived as a victim of the belligerence that divides Spain. To make an elegy in these moments, in which passions burn red hot, will lead to a very indiscreet incitement to controversy. Even waving your illustrious name like a battle flag will give the hotheads on the other side an opportunity to damage the legacy of your friend, which you ought to keep sacred. It is useless to tell me that your talk will not be political, because in these circumstances it will have to be defined as such. No, my dear Neruda, the hour of García Lorca has not yet arrived.
Undeterred, Neruda and Delia moved into a place on the Left Bank. The bohemian neighborhood, with its famed international community of writers, artists, and intellectuals, had become a hotbed of activism against fascism and in defense of the Spanish Republic. Yet just as Neruda arrived, news broke that 10,500 Italian troops had landed in Spain. Any hope of saving the Republic seemed more tenuous than ever.
