Poems Of Pablo Neruda

Biography

Pablo Neruda was born Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto in Parral, Chile on July 12, 1904. His mother

died just weeks later, and his father discouraged his affinity for poetry, which he had displayed

since the age of ten. His family’s disapproval drove the young Basoalto to write under the

pseudonym of Pablo Neruda, which he officially adopted in 1946. Neruda was married three times,

although Chile did not officially recognize his second marriage. Although his published poetry was

widely respected by the time he reached age twenty, Neruda found it necessary to follow his

budding political career to Asia in order to make a living. In Europe in the 1930’s he became

involved in Communism , which would influence his later political actions as well as much of his

poetry. In 1946 he successfully campaigned in Chile for the regime of Gabriel Gonzalez Videla, but

he soon publicly expressed displeasure with Videla’s presidency and was forced to flee his homeland

for several years. Neruda was able to return to Chile in 1952, finally both wealthy and widely

respected. In 1971 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature . He died of cancer at age 69

on September 23, 1973. By that time he was recognized as a national hero and the greatest Latin

American poet of the twentieth century.

I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You

I do not love you except because I love you;

I go from loving to not loving you,

From waiting to not waiting for you

My heart moves from cold to fire.

I love you only because it's you the one I love;

I hate you deeply, and hating you

Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you

Is that I do not see you but love you blindly.

Maybe January light will consume

My heart with its cruel

Ray, stealing my key to true calm.

Love Sonnet

I do not love you as if you were a 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.

In this part of the story I am the one who

Dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,

Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood.

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 loving 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

I do not love you...

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.

Morning (Love Sonnet)

Naked you are simple as one of your hands;

Smooth, earthy, small, transparent, round.

You've moon-lines, apple pathways

Naked you are slender as a naked grain of wheat.

Naked you are blue as a night in Cuba;

You've vines and stars in your hair.

Naked you are spacious and yellow

As summer in a golden church.

Naked you are tiny as one of your nails;

Curved, subtle, rosy, till the day is born

And you withdraw to the underground world.

As if down a long tunnel of clothing and of chores;

Your clear light dims, gets dressed, drops its leaves,

And becomes a naked hand again.

Walking Around

It so happens I am sick of being a man.

And it happens that I walk into tailorshops and movie

houses

dried up, waterproof, like a swan made of felt

steering my way in a water of wombs and ashes.

The smell of barbershops makes me break into hoarse

sobs.

The only thing I want is to lie still like stones or wool.

The only thing I want is to see no more stores, no gardens,

no more goods, no spectacles, no elevators.

It so happens that I am sick of my feet and my nails

and my hair and my shadow.

It so happens I am sick of being a man.

Still it would be marvelous

to terrify a law clerk with a cut lily,

or kill a nun with a blow on the ear.

It would be great

to go through the streets with a green knife

letting out yells until I died of the cold.

I don't want to go on being a root in the dark,

insecure, stretched out, shivering with sleep,

going on down, into the moist guts of the earth,

taking in and thinking, eating every day.

I don't want so much misery.

I don't want to go on as a root and a tomb,

alone under the ground, a warehouse with corpses,

half frozen, dying of grief.

That's why Monday, when it sees me coming

with my convict face, blazes up like gasoline,

and it howls on its way like a wounded wheel,

and leaves tracks full of warm blood leading toward the

night.

And it pushes me into certain corners, into some moist

houses,

into hospitals where the bones fly out the window,

into shoeshops that smell like vinegar,

and certain streets hideous as cracks in the skin.

There are sulphur-colored birds, and hideous intestines

hanging over the doors of houses that I hate,

and there are false teeth forgotten in a coffeepot,

there are mirrors

that ought to have wept from shame and terror,

there are umbrellas everywhere, and venoms, and umbilical

cords.

I stroll along serenely, with my eyes, my shoes,

my rage, forgetting everything,

I walk by, going through office buildings and orthopedic

shops,

and courtyards with washing hanging from the line:

underwear, towels and shirts from which slow

dirty tears are falling.

Saddest Poem

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.

Write, for instance: "The night is full of stars,

and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance."

The night wind whirls in the sky and sings.

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.

I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like this, I held her in my arms.

I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her.

How could I not have loved her large, still eyes?

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.

To think I don't have her. To feel that I've lost her.

To hear the immense night, more immense without her.

And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass.

What does it matter that my love couldn't keep her.

The night is full of stars and she is not with me.

That's all. Far away, someone sings. Far away.

My soul is lost without her.

As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her.

My heart searches for her and she is not with me.

The same night that whitens the same trees.

We, we who were, we are the same no longer.

I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her.

My voice searched the wind to touch her ear.

Someone else's. She will be someone else's. As she once

belonged to my kisses.

Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her.

Love is so short and oblivion so long.

Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,

my soul is lost without her.

Although this may be the last pain she causes me,

and this may be the last poem I write for her.

Tonight I Can Write

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, 'The night is starry

and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.

I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.

How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.

And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.

The night is starry and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.

My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.

My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.

We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.

My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.

Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.

Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms

my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer

and these the last verses that I write for her.

I Like For You To Be Still

I like for you to be still

It is as though you are absent

And you hear me from far away

And my voice does not touch you

It seems as though your eyes had flown away

And it seems that a kiss had sealed your mouth

As all things are filled with my soul

You emerge from the things

Filled with my soul

You are like my soul

A butterfly of dream

And you are like the word: Melancholy

I like for you to be still

And you seem far away

It sounds as though you are lamenting

A butterfly cooing like a dove

And you hear me from far away

And my voice does not reach you

Let me come to be still in your silence

And let me talk to you with your silence

That is bright as a lamp

Simple, as a ring

You are like the night

With its stillness and constellations

Your silence is that of a star

As remote and candid

I like for you to be still

It is as though you are absent

Distant and full of sorrow

So you would've died

One word then, One smile is enough

And I'm happy;

Happy that it's not true

A Song Of Despair

The memory of you emerges from the night around me.

The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.

Deserted like the dwarves at dawn.

It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one!

Cold flower heads are raining over my heart.

Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked.

In you the wars and the flights accumulated.

From you the wings of the song birds rose.

You swallowed everything, like distance.

Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank!

It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss.

The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse.

Pilot's dread, fury of blind driver,

turbulent drunkenness of love, in you everything sank!

In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded.

Lost discoverer, in you everything sank!

You girdled sorrow, you clung to desire,

sadness stunned you, in you everything sank!

I made the wall of shadow draw back,

beyond desire and act, I walked on.

Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost,

I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you.

Like a jar you housed infinite tenderness.

and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar.

There was the black solitude of the islands,

and there, woman of love, your arms took me in.

There was thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit.

There were grief and ruins, and you were the miracle.

Ah woman, I do not know how you could contain me

in the earth of your soul, in the cross of your arms!

How terrible and brief my desire was to you!

How difficult and drunken, how tensed and avid.

Cemetery of kisses, there is still fire in your tombs,

still the fruited boughs burn, pecked at by birds.

Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs,

oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bodies.

Oh the mad coupling of hope and force

in which we merged and despaired.

And the tenderness, light as water and as flour.

And the word scarcely begun on the lips.

This was my destiny and in it was my voyage of my longing,

and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank!

Oh pit of debris, everything fell into you,

what sorrow did you not express, in what sorrow are you not drowned!

From billow to billow you still called and sang.

Standing like a sailor in the prow of a vessel.

You still flowered in songs, you still brike the currents.

Oh pit of debris, open and bitter well.

Pale blind diver, luckless slinger,

lost discoverer, in you everything sank!

It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour

which the night fastens to all the timetables.

The rustling belt of the sea girdles the shore.

Cold stars heave up, black birds migrate.

Deserted like the wharves at dawn.

Only tremulous shadow twists in my hands.

Oh farther than everything. Oh farther than everything.

It is the hour of departure. Oh abandoned one!

Don't Go Far Off, Not Even For A Day

Don't go far off, not even for a day, because --

because -- I don't know how to say it: a day is long

and I will be waiting for you, as in an empty station

when the trains are parked off somewhere else, asleep.

Don't leave me, even for an hour, because

then the little drops of anguish will all run together,

the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift

into me, choking my lost heart.

Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve on the beach;

may your eyelids never flutter into the empty distance.

Don't leave me for a second, my dearest,

because in that moment you'll have gone so far

I'll wander mazily over all the earth, asking,

Will you come back? Will you leave me here, dying?

Love

What's wrong with you, with us,

what's happening to us?

Ah our love is a harsh cord

that binds us wounding us

and if we want

to leave our wound,

to separate,

it makes a new knot for us and condemns us

to drain our blood and burn together.

What's wrong with you? I look at you

and I find nothing in you but two eyes

like all eyes, a mouth

lost among a thousand mouths that I have kissed, more beautiful,

a body just like those that have slipped

beneath my body without leaving any memory.

And how empty you went through the world

like a wheat-colored jar

without air, without sound, without substance!

I vainly sought in you

depth for my arms

that dig, without cease, beneath the earth:

beneath your skin, beneath your eyes,

nothing,

beneath your double breast scarcely

raised

a current of crystalline order

that does not know why it flows singing.

Why, why, why,

my love, why?

Drunk As Drunk

Drunk as drunk on turpentine

From your open kisses,

Your wet body wedged

Between my wet body and the strake

Of our boat that is made of flowers,

Feasted, we guide it - our fingers

Like tallows adorned with yellow metal -

Over the sky's hot rim,

The day's last breath in our sails.

Pinned by the sun between solstice

And equinox, drowsy and tangled together

We drifted for months and woke

With the bitter taste of land on our lips,

Eyelids all sticky, and we longed for lime

And the sound of a rope

Lowering a bucket down its well. Then,

We came by night to the Fortunate Isles,

And lay like fish

Under the net of our kisses.

Come With Me, I Said, And No One Knew

Come with me, I said, and no one knew

where, or how my pain throbbed,

no carnations or barcaroles for me,

only a wound that love had opened.

I said it again: Come with me, as if I were dying,

and no one saw the moon that bled in my mouth

or the blood that rose into the silence.

O Love, now we can forget the star that has such thorns!

That is why when I heard your voice repeat

Come with me, it was as if you had let loose

the grief, the love, the fury of a cork-trapped wine

the geysers flooding from deep in its vault:

in my mouth I felt the taste of fire again,

of blood and carnations, of rock and scald.

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair

Don't go far off, not even for a day

Don't go far off, not even for a day,

Because I don't know how to say it - a day is long

And I will be waiting for you, as in

An empty station when the trains are

Parked off somewhere else, asleep.

Don't leave me, even for an hour, because then

The little drops of anguish will all run together,

The smoke that roams looking for a home will drift

Into me, choking my lost heart.

Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve

On the beach, may your eyelids never flutter

Into the empty distance. Don't LEAVE me for

A second, my dearest, because in that moment you'll

Have gone so far I'll wander mazily

Over all the earth, asking, will you

Come back? Will you leave me here, dying?

Always

I am not jealous

of what came before me.

Come with a man

on your shoulders,

come with a hundred men in your hair,

come with a thousand men between your breasts and your feet,

come like a river

full of drowned men

which flows down to the wild sea,

to the eternal surf, to Time!

Bring them all

to where I am waiting for you;

we shall always be alone,

we shall always be you and I

alone on earth

to start our life!

Thinking, Tangling Shadows...

Thinking, tangling shadows in the deep solitude.

You are far away too, oh farther than anyone.

Thinking, freeing birds, dissolving images,

burying lamps.

Belfry of fogs, how far away, up there!

Stifling laments, milling shadowy hopes,

taciturn miller,

night falls on you face downward, far from the city.

Your presence is foreign, as strange to me as a thing.

I think, I explore great tracts of my life before you.

My life before anyone, my harsh life.

The shout facing the sea, among the rocks,

running free, mad, in the sea-spray.

The sad rage, the shout, the solitude of the sea.

Headlong, violent, stretched towards the sky.

You, woman, what were you there, what ray, what vane

of that immense fan? You were as far as you are now.

Fire in the forest! Burn in blue crosses.

Burn, burn, flame up, sparkle in trees of light.

It collapses, crackling. Fire. Fire.

And my soul dances, seared with curls of fire.

Who calls? What silence peopled with echoes?

Hour of nostalgia, hour of happiness, hour of solitude.

Hour that is mine from among them all!

Megaphone in which the wind passes singing.

Such a passion of weeping tied to my body.

Shaking of all the roots,

attack of all the waves!

My soul wandered, happy, sad, unending.

Thinking, burying lamps in the deep solitude.

Who are you, who are you?

Clenched Soul

We have lost even this twilight.

No one saw us this evening hand in hand

while the blue night dropped on the world.

I have seen from my window

the fiesta of sunset in the distant mountain tops.

Sometimes a piece of sun

burned like a coin in my hand.

I remembered you with my soul clenched

in that sadness of mine that you know.

Where were you then?

Who else was there?

Saying what?

Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly

when I am sad and feel you are far away?

The book fell that always closed at twilight

and my blue sweater rolled like a hurt dog at my feet.

Always, always you recede through the evenings

toward the twilight erasing statues.

Leaning Into The Afternoons

Leaning into the afternoons,

I cast my sad nets towards your oceanic eyes.

There, in the highest blaze my solitude lengthens and flames;

Its arms turning like a drowning man's.

I send out red signals across your absent eyes

That wave like the sea, or the beach by a lighthouse.

You keep only darkness my distant female;

>From your regard sometimes, the coast of dread emerges.

Leaning into the afternoons,

I fling my sad nets to that sea that is thrashed

By your oceanic eyes.

The birds of night peck at the first stars

That flash like my soul when I love you.

The night, gallops on its shadowy mare

Shedding blue tassels over the land.

A Dog Has Died

My dog has died.

I buried him in the garden

next to a rusted old machine.

Some day I'll join him right there,

but now he's gone with his shaggy coat,

his bad manners and his cold nose,

and I, the materialist, who never believed

in any promised heaven in the sky

for any human being,

I believe in a heaven I'll never enter.

Yes, I believe in a heaven for all dogdom

where my dog waits for my arrival

waving his fan-like tail in friendship.

Ai, I'll not speak of sadness here on earth,

of having lost a companion

who was never servile.

His friendship for me, like that of a porcupine

withholding its authority,

was the friendship of a star, aloof,

with no more intimacy than was called for,

with no exaggerations:

he never climbed all over my clothes

filling me full of his hair or his mange,

he never rubbed up against my knee

like other dogs obsessed with sex.

No, my dog used to gaze at me,

paying me the attention I need,

the attention required

to make a vain person like me understand

that, being a dog, he was wasting time,

but, with those eyes so much purer than mine,

he'd keep on gazing at me

with a look that reserved for me alone

all his sweet and shaggy life,

always near me, never troubling me,

and asking nothing.

Ai, how many times have I envied his tail

as we walked together on the shores of the sea

in the lonely winter of Isla Negra

where the wintering birds filled the sky

and my hairy dog was jumping about

full of the voltage of the sea's movement:

my wandering dog, sniffing away

with his golden tail held high,

face to face with the ocean's spray.

Joyful, joyful, joyful,

as only dogs know how to be happy

with only the autonomy

of their shameless spirit.

There are no good-byes for my dog who has died,

and we don't now and never did lie to each other.

So now he's gone and I buried him,

and that's all there is to it.

Ode To Wine

Day-colored wine,

night-colored wine,

wine with purple feet

or wine with topaz blood,

wine,

starry child

of earth,

wine, smooth

as a golden sword,

soft

as lascivious velvet,

wine, spiral-seashelled

and full of wonder,

amorous,

marine;

never has one goblet contained you,

one song, one man,

you are choral, gregarious,

at the least, you must be shared.

At times

you feed on mortal

memories;

your wave carries us

from tomb to tomb,

stonecutter of icy sepulchers,

and we weep

transitory tears;

your

glorious

spring dress

is different,

blood rises through the shoots,

wind incites the day,

nothing is left

of your immutable soul.

Wine

stirs the spring, happiness

bursts through the earth like a plant,

walls crumble,

and rocky cliffs,

chasms close,

as song is born.

A jug of wine, and thou beside me

in the wilderness,

sang the ancient poet.

Let the wine pitcher

add to the kiss of love its own.

My darling, suddenly

the line of your hip

becomes the brimming curve

of the wine goblet,

your breast is the grape cluster,

your nipples are the grapes,

the gleam of spirits lights your hair,

and your navel is a chaste seal

stamped on the vessel of your belly,

your love an inexhaustible

cascade of wine,

light that illuminates my senses,

the earthly splendor of life.

But you are more than love,

the fiery kiss,

the heat of fire,

more than the wine of life;

you are

the community of man,

translucency,

chorus of discipline,

abundance of flowers.

I like on the table,

when we're speaking,

the light of a bottle

of intelligent wine.

Drink it,

and remember in every

drop of gold,

in every topaz glass,

in every purple ladle,

that autumn labored

to fill the vessel with wine;

and in the ritual of his office,

let the simple man remember

to think of the soil and of his duty,

to propagate the canticle of the wine.

Enigmas

You've asked me what the lobster is weaving there with

his golden feet?

I reply, the ocean knows this.

You say, what is the ascidia waiting for in its transparent

bell? What is it waiting for?

I tell you it is waiting for time, like you.

You ask me whom the Macrocystis alga hugs in its arms?

Study, study it, at a certain hour, in a certain sea I know.

You question me about the wicked tusk of the narwhal,

and I reply by describing

how the sea unicorn with the harpoon in it dies.

You enquire about the kingfisher's feathers,

which tremble in the pure springs of the southern tides?

Or you've found in the cards a new question touching on

the crystal architecture

of the sea anemone, and you'll deal that to me now?

You want to understand the electric nature of the ocean

spines?

The armored stalactite that breaks as it walks?

The hook of the angler fish, the music stretched out

in the deep places like a thread in the water?

I want to tell you the ocean knows this, that life in its

jewel boxes

is endless as the sand, impossible to count, pure,

and among the blood-colored grapes time has made the

petal

hard and shiny, made the jellyfish full of light

and untied its knot, letting its musical threads fall

from a horn of plenty made of infinite mother-of-pearl.

I am nothing but the empty net which has gone on ahead

of human eyes, dead in those darknesses,

of fingers accustomed to the triangle, longitudes

on the timid globe of an orange.

I walked around as you do, investigating

the endless star,

and in my net, during the night, I woke up naked,

the only thing caught, a fish trapped inside the wind.

Puedo Escribir

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.

Escribir, por ejemplo: 'La noche está estrellada,

y tiritan, azules, los astros, a lo lejos.'

El viento de la noche gira en el cielo y canta.

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.

Yo la quise, y a veces ella también me quiso.

Mullookkaaran

En las noches como ésta la tuve entre mis brazos.

La besé tantas veces bajo el cielo infinito.

Ella me quiso, a veces yo también la quería.

Cómo no haber amado sus grandes ojos fijos.

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.

Pensar que no la tengo. Sentir que la he perdido.

Oir la noche inmensa, más inmnesa sin ella.

Y el verso cae al alma como al pasto el rocío.

Qué importa que mi amor no pudiera guadarla.

La noche está estrellada y ella no está conmigo.

Eso es todo. A lo lejos alguien canta. A lo lejos.

Mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.

Como para acercarla mi mirada la busca.

Mi corazón la busca, y ella no está conmigo.

La misma noche que hace blanquear los mismos árboles.

Nosotros, los de entonces, ya no somos los mismos.

Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero cuánto la quise.

Mi voz buscaba el viento para tocar su oído.

De otro. Será de otro. Como antes de mis besos.

Su voz, su cuerpo claro. Sus ojos infinitos.

Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero tal vez la quiero.

Es tan corto el amor, y es tan largo el olvido.

Porque en noches como ésta la tuve entre mis brazos,

mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.

Aunque éste sea el último dolor que ella me causa,

y éstos sean los últimos versos que yo le escribo.

The Light Wraps You

The light wraps you in its mortal flame.

Abstracted pale mourner, standing that way

against the old propellers of the twighlight

that revolves around you.

Speechless, my friend,

alone in the loneliness of this hour of the dead

and filled with the lives of fire,

pure heir of the ruined day.

A bough of fruit falls from the sun on your dark garment.

The great roots of night

grow suddenly from your soul,

and the things that hide in you come out again

so that a blue and palled people

your newly born, takes nourishment.

Oh magnificent and fecund and magnetic slave

of the circle that moves in turn through black and gold:

rise, lead and possess a creation

so rich in life that its flowers perish

and it is full of sadness.

Cat's Dream

How neatly a cat sleeps,

Sleeps with its paws and its posture,

Sleeps with its wicked claws,

And with its unfeeling blood,

Sleeps with ALL the rings a series

Of burnt circles which have formed

The odd geology of its sand-colored tail.

I should like to sleep like a cat,

With all the fur of time,

With a tongue rough as flint,

With the dry sex of fire and

After speaking to no one,

Stretch myself over the world,

Over roofs and landscapes,

With a passionate desire

To hunt the rats in my dreams.

I have seen how the cat asleep

Would undulate, how the night flowed

Through it like dark water and at times,

It was going to fall or possibly

Plunge into the bare deserted snowdrifts.

Sometimes it grew so much in sleep

Like a tiger's great-grandfather,

And would leap in the darkness over

Rooftops, clouds and volcanoes.

Sleep, sleep cat of the night with

Episcopal ceremony and your stone-carved moustache.

Take care of all our dreams

Control the obscurity

Of our slumbering prowess

With your relentless HEART

And the great ruff of your tail.

You are the daughter of the sea

You are the daughter of the sea, oregano's first cousin.

Swimmer, your body is pure as the water;

cook, your blood is quick as the soil.

Everything you do is full of flowers, rich with the earth.

Your eyes go out toward the water, and the waves rise;

your hands go out to the earth and the seeds swell;

you know the deep essence of water and the earth,

conjoined in you like a formula for clay.

Naiad: cut your body into turquoise pieces,

they will bloom resurrected in the kitchen.

This is how you become everything that lives.

And so at last, you sleep, in the circle of my arms

that push back the shadows so that you can rest—

vegetables, seaweed, herbs: the foam of your dreams.

Your Feet

When I cannot look at your face

I look at your feet.

Your feet of arched bone,

your hard little feet.

I know that they support you,

and that your sweet weight

rises upon them.

Your waist and your breasts,

the doubled purple

of your nipples,

the sockets of your eyes

that have just flown away,

your wide fruit mouth,

your red tresses,

my little tower.

But I love your feet

only because they walked

upon the earth and upon

the wind and upon the waters,

until they found me.

Ode To The Onion

Onion,

luminous flask,

your beauty formed

petal by petal,

crystal scales expanded you

and in the secrecy of the dark earth

your belly grew round with dew.

Under the earth

the miracle

happened

and when your clumsy

green stem appeared,

and your leaves were born

like swords

in the garden,

the earth heaped up her power

showing your naked transparency,

and as the remote sea

in lifting the breasts of Aphrodite

duplicating the magnolia,

so did the earth

make you,

onion

clear as a planet

and destined

to shine,

constant constellation,

round rose of water,

upon

the table

of the poor.

You make us cry without hurting us.

I have praised everything that exists,

but to me, onion, you are

more beautiful than a bird

of dazzling feathers,

heavenly globe, platinum goblet,

unmoving dance

of the snowy anemone

and the fragrance of the earth lives

in your crystalline nature.

Ode To The Lemon

From blossoms

released

by the moonlight,

from an

aroma of exasperated

love,

steeped in fragrance,

yellowness

drifted from the lemon tree,

and from its plantarium

lemons descended to the earth.

Tender yield!

The coasts,

the markets glowed

with light, with

unrefined gold;

we opened

two halves

of a miracle,

congealed acid

trickled

from the hemispheres

of a star,

the most intense liqueur

of nature,

unique, vivid,

concentrated,

born of the cool, fresh

lemon,

of its fragrant house,

its acid, secret symmetry.

Knives

sliced a small

cathedral

in the lemon,

the concealed apse, opened,

revealed acid stained glass,

drops

oozed topaz,

altars,

cool architecture.

So, when you hold

the hemisphere

of a cut lemon

above your plate,

you spill

a universe of gold,

a

yellow goblet

of miracles,

a fragrant nipple

of the earth's breast,

a ray of light that was made fruit,

the minute fire of a planet.

Ode To The Artichoke

The artichoke

With a tender heart

Dressed up like a warrior,

Standing at attention, it built

A small helmet

Under its scales

It remained

Unshakeable,

By its side

The crazy vegetables

Uncurled

Their tendrills and leaf-crowns,

Throbbing bulbs,

In the sub-soil

The carrot

With its red mustaches

Was sleeping,

The grapevine

Hung out to dry its branches

Through which the wine will rise,

The cabbage

Dedicated itself

To trying on skirts,

The oregano

To perfuming the world,

And the sweet

Artichoke

There in the garden,

Dressed like a warrior,

Burnished

Like a proud

Pomegrante.

And one day

Side by side

In big wicker baskets

Walking through the market

To realize their dream

The artichoke army

In formation.

Never was it so military

Like on parade.

The men

In their white shirts

Among the vegetables

Were

The Marshals

Of the artichokes

Lines in close order

Command voices,

And the bang

Of a falling box.

But

Then

Maria

Comes

With her basket

She chooses

An artichoke,

She's not afraid of it.

She examines it, she observes it

Up against the light like it was an egg,

She buys it,

She mixes it up

In her handbag

With a pair of shoes

With a cabbage head and a

Bottle

Of vinegar

Until

She enters the kitchen

And submerges it in a pot.

Thus ends

In peace

This career

Of the armed vegetable

Which is called an artichoke,

Then

Scale by scale,

We strip off

The delicacy

And eat

The peaceful mush

Of its green heart.

Tower Of Light

O tower of light, sad beauty

that magnified necklaces and statues in the sea,

calcareous eye, insignia of the vast waters, cry

of the mourning petrel, tooth of the sea, wife

of the Oceanian wind, O separate rose

from the long stem of the trampled bush

that the depths, converted into archipelago,

O natural star, green diadem,

alone in your lonesome dynasty,

still unattainable, elusive, desolate

like one drop, like one grape, like the sea.

Nothing But Death

There are cemeteries that are lonely,

graves full of bones that do not make a sound,

the heart moving through a tunnel,

in it darkness, darkness, darkness,

like a shipwreck we die going into ourselves,

as though we were drowning inside our hearts,

as though we lived falling out of the skin into the soul.

And there are corpses,

feet made of cold and sticky clay,

death is inside the bones,

like a barking where there are no dogs,

coming out from bells somewhere, from graves somewhere,

growing in the damp air like tears of rain.

Sometimes I see alone

coffins under sail,

embarking with the pale dead, with women that have dead hair,

with bakers who are as white as angels,

and pensive young girls married to notary publics,

caskets sailing up the vertical river of the dead,

the river of dark purple,

moving upstream with sails filled out by the sound of death,

filled by the sound of death which is silence.

Death arrives among all that sound

like a shoe with no foot in it, like a suit with no man in it,

comes and knocks, using a ring with no stone in it, with no

finger in it,

comes and shouts with no mouth, with no tongue, with no

throat.

Nevertheless its steps can be heard

and its clothing makes a hushed sound, like a tree.

I'm not sure, I understand only a little, I can hardly see,

but it seems to me that its singing has the color of damp violets,

of violets that are at home in the earth,

because the face of death is green,

and the look death gives is green,

with the penetrating dampness of a violet leaf

and the somber color of embittered winter.

But death also goes through the world dressed as a broom,

lapping the floor, looking for dead bodies,

death is inside the broom,

the broom is the tongue of death looking for corpses,

it is the needle of death looking for thread.

Death is inside the folding cots:

it spends its life sleeping on the slow mattresses,

in the black blankets, and suddenly breathes out:

it blows out a mournful sound that swells the sheets,

and the beds go sailing toward a port

where death is waiting, dressed like an admiral.

Magellanic Penguin

Neither clown nor child nor black

nor white but verticle

and a questioning innocence

dressed in night and snow:

The mother smiles at the sailor,

the fisherman at the astronaunt,

but the child child does not smile

0when he looks at the bird child,

and from the disorderly ocean

the immaculate passenger

emerges in snowy mourning.

I was without doubt the child bird

there in the cold archipelagoes

when it looked at me with its eyes,

with its ancient ocean eyes:

it had neither arms nor wings

but hard little oars

on its sides:

it was as old as the salt;

the age of moving water,

and it looked at me from its age:

since then I know I do not exist;

I am a worm in the sand.

the reasons for my respect

remained in the sand:

the religious bird

did not need to fly,

did not need to sing,

and through its form was visible

its wild soul bled salt:

as if a vein from the bitter sea

had been broken.

Penguin, static traveler,

deliberate priest of the cold,

I salute your vertical salt

and envy your plumed pride.

Ode To Tomatoes

The street

filled with tomatoes,

midday,

summer,

light is

halved

like

a

tomato,

its juice

runs

through the streets.

In December,

unabated,

the tomato

invades

the kitchen,

it enters at lunchtime,

takes

its ease

on countertops,

among glasses,

butter dishes,

blue saltcellars.

It sheds

its own light,

benign majesty.

Unfortunately, we must

murder it:

the knife

sinks

into living flesh,

red

viscera

a cool

sun,

profound,

inexhaustible,

populates the salads

of Chile,

happily, it is wed

to the clear onion,

and to celebrate the union

we

pour

oil,

essential

child of the olive,

onto its halved hemispheres,

pepper

adds

its fragrance,

salt, its magnetism;

it is the wedding

of the day,

parsley

hoists

its flag,

potatoes

bubble vigorously,

the aroma

of the roast

knocks

at the door,

it's time!

come on!

and, on

the table, at the midpoint

of summer,

the tomato,

star of earth, recurrent

and fertile

star,

displays

its convolutions,

its canals,

its remarkable amplitude

and abundance,

no pit,

no husk,

no leaves or thorns,

the tomato offers

its gift

of fiery color

and cool completeness.

The Dictators

An odor has remained among the sugarcane:

a mixture of blood and body, a penetrating

petal that brings nausea.

Between the coconut palms the graves are full

of ruined bones, of speechless death-rattles.

The delicate dictator is talking

with top hats, gold braid, and collars.

The tiny palace gleams like a watch

and the rapid laughs with gloves on

cross the corridors at times

and join the dead voices

and the blue mouths freshly buried.

The weeping cannot be seen, like a plant

whose seeds fall endlessly on the earth,

whose large blind leaves grow even without light.

Hatred has grown scale on scale,

blow on blow, in the ghastly water of the swamp,

with a snout full of ooze and silence

Gentleman Alone

The young maricones and the horny muchachas,

The big fat widows delirious from insomnia,

The young wives thirty hours' pregnant,

And the hoarse tomcats that cross my garden at night,

Like a collar of palpitating sexual oysters

Surround my solitary home,

Enemies of my soul,

Conspirators in pajamas

Who exchange deep kisses for passwords.

Radiant summer brings out the lovers

In melancholy regiments,

Fat and thin and happy and sad couples;

Under the elegant coconut palms, near the ocean and moon,

There is a continual life of pants and panties,

A hum from the fondling of silk stockings,

And women's breasts that glisten like eyes.

The salary man, after a while,

After the week's tedium, and the novels read in bed at night,

Has decisively fucked his neighbor,

And now takes her to the miserable movies,

Where the heroes are horses or passionate princes,

And he caresses her legs covered with sweet down

With his ardent and sweaty palms that smell like cigarettes.

The night of the hunter and the night of the husband

Come together like bed sheets and bury me,

And the hours after lunch, when the students and priests are masturbating,

And the animals mount each other openly,

And the bees smell of blood, and the flies buzz cholerically,

And cousins play strange games with cousins,

And doctors glower at the husband of the young patient,

And the early morning in which the professor, without a thought,

Pays his conjugal debt and eats breakfast,

And to top it all off, the adulterers, who love each other truly

On beds big and tall as ships:

So, eternally,

This twisted and breathing forest crushes me

With gigantic flowers like mouth and teeth

And black roots like fingernails and shoes.

Ode To Salt

This salt

in the saltcellar

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 infinitude.

The White Mans Burden

Lost in the forest, I broke off a dark twig

and lifted its whisper to my thirsty lips:

maybe it was the voice of the rain crying,

a cracked bell, or a torn heart.

Something from far off it seemed

deep and secret to me, hidden by the earth,

a shout muffled by huge autumns,

by the moist half-open darkness of the leaves.

Wakening from the dreaming forest there, the hazel-sprig

sang under my tongue, its drifting fragrance

climbed up through my conscious mind

as if suddenly the roots I had left behind

cried out to me, the land I had lost with my childhood---

and I stopped, wounded by the wandering scent

Ode To a Lemon

Out of lemon flowers

loosed

on the moonlight, love's

lashed and insatiable

essences,

sodden with fragrance,

the lemon tree's yellow

emerges,

the lemons

move down

from the tree's planetarium

Delicate merchandise!

The harbors are big with itbazaars

for the light and the

barbarous gold.

We open

the halves

of a miracle,

and a clotting of acids

brims

into the starry

divisions:

creation's

original juices,

irreducible, changeless,

alive:

so the freshness lives on

in a lemon,

in the sweet-smelling house of the rind,

the proportions, arcane and acerb.

Cutting the lemon

the knife

leaves a little cathedral:

alcoves unguessed by the eye

that open acidulous glass

to the light; topazes

riding the droplets,

altars,

aromatic facades.

So, while the hand

holds the cut of the lemon,

half a world

on a trencher,

the gold of the universe

wells

to your touch:

a cup yellow

with miracles,

a breast and a nipple

perfuming the earth;

a flashing made fruitage,

the diminutive fire of a planet.

Ode To an Artichoke

The artichoke

of delicate heart

erect

in its battle-dress, builds

its minimal cupola;

keeps

stark

in its scallop of

scales.

Around it,

demoniac vegetables

bristle their thicknesses,

devise

tendrils and belfries,

the bulb's agitations;

while under the subsoil

the carrot

sleeps sound in its

rusty mustaches.

Runner and filaments

bleach in the vineyards,

whereon rise the vines.

The sedulous cabbage

arranges its petticoats;

oregano

sweetens a world;

and the artichoke

dulcetly there in a gardenplot,

armed for a skirmish,

goes proud

in its pomegranate

burnishes.

Till, on a day,

each by the other,

the artichoke moves

to its dream

of a market place

in the big willow

hoppers:

a battle formation.

Most warlike

of defiladeswith

men

in the market stalls,

white shirts

in the soup-greens,

artichoke field marshals,

close-order conclaves,

commands, detonations,

and voices,

a crashing of crate staves.

And

Maria

come

down

with her hamper

to

make trial

of an artichoke:

she reflects, she examines,

she candles them up to the light like an egg,

never flinching;

she bargains,

she tumbles her prize

in a market bag

among shoes and a

cabbage head,

a bottle

of vinegar; is back

in her kitchen.

The artichoke drowns in a pot.

So you have it:

a vegetable, armed,

a profession

(call it an artichoke)

whose end

is millennial.

We taste of that

sweetness,

dismembering scale after scale.

We eat of a halcyon paste:

it is green at the artichoke heart.

Ode To a Large Tuna in the Market

Among the market greens,

a bullet

from the ocean

depths,

a swimming

projectile,

I saw you,

dead.

All around you

were lettuces,

sea foam

of the earth,

carrots,

grapes,

but

of the ocean

truth,

of the unknown,

of the

unfathomable

shadow, the

depths

of the sea,

the abyss,

only you had survived,

a pitch-black, varnished

witness

to deepest night.

Only you, well-aimed

dark bullet

from the abyss,

mangled at one tip,

but constantly

reborn,

at anchor in the current,

winged fins

windmilling

in the swift

flight

of

the

marine

shadow,

a mourning arrow,

dart of the sea,

olive, oily fish.

I saw you dead,

a deceased king

of my own ocean,

green

assault, silver

submarine fir,

seed

of seaquakes,

now

only dead remains,

yet

in all the market

yours

was the only

purposeful form

amid

the bewildering rout

of nature;

amid the fragile greens

you were

a solitary ship,

armed

among the vegetables,

fin and prow black and oiled,

as if you were still

the vessel of the wind,

the one and only

pure

ocean

machine:

unflawed, navigating

the waters of death.

Ode To Wine

Day-colored wine,

night-colored wine,

wine with purple feet

or wine with topaz blood,

wine,

starry child

of earth,

wine, smooth

as a golden sword,

soft

as lascivious velvet,

wine, spiral-seashelled

and full of wonder,

amorous,

marine;

never has one goblet contained you,

one song, one man,

you are choral, gregarious,

at the least, you must be shared.

At times

you feed on mortal

memories;

your wave carries us

from tomb to tomb,

stonecutter of icy sepulchers,

and we weep

transitory tears;

your

glorious

spring dress

is different,

blood rises through the shoots,

wind incites the day,

nothing is left

of your immutable soul.

Wine

stirs the spring, happiness

bursts through the earth like a plant,

walls crumble,

and rocky cliffs,

chasms close,

as song is born.

A jug of wine, and thou beside me

in the wilderness,

sang the ancient poet.

Mullookkaaran

Let the wine pitcher

add to the kiss of love its own.

My darling, suddenly

the line of your hip

becomes the brimming curve

of the wine goblet,

your breast is the grape cluster,

your nipples are the grapes,

the gleam of spirits lights your hair,

and your navel is a chaste seal

stamped on the vessel of your belly,

your love an inexhaustible

cascade of wine,

light that illuminates my senses,

the earthly splendor of life.

But you are more than love,

the fiery kiss,

the heat of fire,

more than the wine of life;

you are

the community of man,

translucency,

chorus of discipline,

abundance of flowers.

I like on the table,

when we're speaking,

the light of a bottle

of intelligent wine.

Drink it,

and remember in every

drop of gold,

in every topaz glass,

in every purple ladle,

that autumn labored

to fill the vessel with wine;

and in the ritual of his office,

let the simple man remember

to think of the soil and of his duty,

to propagate the canticle of the wine

Ode To Conger Chowder

In the storm-tossed

Chilean

sea

lives the rosy conger,

giant eel

of snowy flesh.

And in Chilean

stewpots,

along the coast,

was born the chowder,

thick and succulent,

a boon to man.

You bring the conger, skinned,

to the kitchen

(its mottled skin slips off

like a glove,

leaving the

grape of the sea

exposed to the world),

naked,

the tender eel

glistens,

prepared

to serve our appetites.

Now

you take

garlic,

first, caress

that precious

ivory,

smell

its irate fragrance,

then

blend the minced garlic

with onion

and tomato

until the onion

is the color of gold.

Meanwhile steam

our regal

ocean prawns,

and when

they are

tender,

when the savor is

set in a sauce

combining the liquors

of the ocean

and the clear water

released from the light of the onion,

then

you add the eel

that it may be immersed in glory,

that it may steep in the oils

of the pot,

shrink and be saturated.

Now all that remains is to

drop a dollop of cream

into the concoction,

a heavy rose,

then slowly

deliver

the treasure to the flame,

until in the chowder

are warmed

the essences of Chile,

and to the table

come, newly wed,

the savors

of land and sea,

that in this dish

you may know heaven.

Ode To a Chestnut on the Ground

From bristly foliage

you fell

complete, polished wood, gleaming mahogany,

as perfect

as a violin newly

born of the treetops,

that falling

offers its sealed-in gifts,

the hidden sweetness

that grew in secret

amid birds and leaves,

a model of form,

kin to wood and flour,

an oval instrument

that holds within it

intact delight, an edible rose.

In the heights you abandoned

the sea-urchin burr

that parted its spines

in the light of the chestnut tree;

through that slit

you glimpsed the world,

birds

bursting with syllables,

starry

dew

below,

the heads of boys

and girls,

grasses stirring restlessly,

smoke rising, rising.

You made your decision,

chestnut, and leaped to earth,

burnished and ready,

firm and smooth

as the small breasts

of the islands of America.

You fell,

you struck

the ground,

but

nothing happened,

the grass

still stirred, the old

chestnut sighed with the mouths

of a forest of trees,

a red leaf of autumn fell,

resolutely, the hours marched on

across the earth.

Because you are

only

a seed,

chestnut tree, autumn, earth,

water, heights, silence

prepared the germ,

the floury density,

the maternal eyelids

that buried will again

open toward the heights

the simple majesty of foliage,

the dark damp plan

of new roots,

the ancient but new dimensions

of another chestnut tree in the earth.

Ode To Maize

America, from a grain

of maize you grew

to crown

with spacious lands

the ocean foam.

A grain of maize was your geography.

From the grain

a green lance rose,

was covered with gold,

to grace the heights

of Peru with its yellow tassels.

But, poet, let

history rest in its shroud;

praise with your lyre

the grain in its granaries:

sing to the simple maize in the kitchen.

First, a fine beard

fluttered in the field

above the tender teeth

of the young ear.

Then the husks parted

and fruitfulness burst its veils

of pale papyrus

that grains of laughter

might fall upon the earth.

To the stone,

in your journey,

you returned.

Not to the terrible stone,

the bloody

triangle of Mexican death,

but to the grinding stone,

sacred

stone of your kitchens.

There, milk and matter,

strength-giving, nutritious

cornmeal pulp,

you were worked and patted

by the wondrous hands

of dark-skinned women.

Wherever you fall, maize,

whether into the

splendid pot of partridge, or among

country beans, you light up

the meal and lend it

your virginal flavor.

Oh, to bite into

the steaming ear beside the sea

of distant song and deepest waltz.

To boil you

as your aroma

spreads through

blue sierras.

But is there

no end

to your treasure?

In chalky, barren lands

bordered

by the sea, along

the rocky Chilean coast,

at times

only your radiance

reaches the empty

table of the miner.

Your light, your cornmeal, your hope

pervades America's solitudes,

and to hunger

your lances

are enemy legions.

Within your husks,

like gentle kernels,

our sober provincial

children's hearts were nurtured,

until life began

to shuck us from the ear.