Pablo Neruda (July 12, 1904 – September 23, 1973) was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean poet, diplomat and politician Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. He chose his pen name after Czech poet Jan Neruda. In 1971 Neruda won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Neruda became known as a poet while still a teenager. He wrote in a variety of styles including surrealist poems, historical epics, overtly political manifestos, a prose autobiography, and erotically-charged love poems such as the ones in his 1924 collection Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. He often wrote in green ink as it was his personal symbol for desire and hope with his poetry.
EVERY DAY YOU PLAY…
Pablo Neruda
Subtle visitor, you arrive in the flower and the water,
You are more than this white head that I hold tightly
as a bunch of flowers, every day, between my hands.
You are like nobody since I love you.
Let me spread you out among yellow garlands.
Who writes your name in letters of smoke among the stars of the south?
Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed.
Suddenly the wind howls and bangs at my shut window.
The sky is a net crammed with shadowy fish.
Here all the winds let go sooner or later, all of them.
The rain takes off her clothes.
The birds go by, fleeing.
The wind. The wind.
I alone can contend against the power of men.
The storm whirls dark leaves
and turns loose all the boats that were moored last night to the sky.
You are here. Oh, you do not run away.
You will answer me to the last cry.
Curl round me as though you were frightened.
Even so, a strange shadow once ran through your eyes.
Now, now too, little one, you bring me honeysuckle,
and even your ******* smell of it.
While the sad wind goes slaughtering butterflies
I love you, and my happiness bites the plum of your mouth.
How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me,
my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running.
So many times we have seen the morning star burn, kissing our eyes,
and over our heads the grey light unwinds in turning fans.
My words rained over you, stroking you.
A long time I have loved the sunned mother-of-pearl of your body.
Until I even believe that you own the universe.
I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains, bluebells, dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses.
I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.
Pablo Neruda
We were traveling from
Totoral, dusty
was our planet,
pampa encircled
by azure sky:
heat and light in emptiness.
It was
passing through
Yaco Barranca
toward forsaken Ongamira
that we saw
horizontal on the prairie
a toppled giant,
a dead carob tree.
Last night’s
storm
ripped out its silvery
roots,
left them twisted
like tangled hair, a tortured mane
unmoving in the wind.
I walked closer, and such
was its ruined strength,
so heroic the branches on the ground,
the crown radiating such
earthly majesty,
that when
I touched its trunk
I felt it throbbing,
and a surge
from the heart of the tree
made me close my eyes
and bow
my head.
It was sturdy and furrowed
by time, a strong
column carved
by earth and rain,
and like a
candelabrum
it had spread its rounded
arms of wood
to lavish
green light and shadow
on the plain.
The American
storm, the
blue
north wind
of the prairie,
had overtaken
this sturdy carob,
goblet
strong as iron,
and with a blast from the sky
had felled its beauty.
I stood there staring
at what only yesterday
had harbored
forest sounds and nests,
but I did not weep
because my dead brother
was as beautiful in death as in life.
I said good-bye. And left it
lying there
on the mother earth.
I left the wind
keeping watch and weeping,
and from afar I saw
the
wind
caressing its head.
========
ODE TO NIGHTTIME
Pablo Neruda
Behind
daylight,
behind every tree and rock,
behind every brook,
night,
you rush around working
or you rest,
waiting
for your retracted roots
to grow into foliage or flower.
You thrash around the sky
like
a flag,
you pour yourself into
sierras and seas
and the smallest cavities, too:
the exhausted peasant’s hardened eyes
and the black coral
of people’s mouths
opened wide in sleep.
You run wild
over the savage flow
of rivers,
you penetrate, night, hidden paths
and love’s deep constellations—
tangle of naked bodies—
and crimes that splatter
the shadows with screams.
All the while trains
stay on schedule, stokers
feed night-black coal to red fire.
The overworked accountant
wanders deep in a forest
of petrified papers,
and bakers knead
mounds of whiteness.
Night also sleeps
like a blind horse.
It’s raining
all over the country:
on the huge trees
of my homeland
and on roofs
of corrugated metal
night’s song
is heard.
Rain and darkness are the blade
of a singing sword
while stars, or jasmine petals,
gaze
from blackened heights:
they are signs
that, little by little,
with time’s slow passage,
we will come to understand.
Nighttime,
my nighttime,
night of the whole earth,
you bear something
within you, something round
like a child
about to be born, like a
bursting
seed:
it’s a miracle,
it’s daylight.
Your beauty is all the greater
because you nourish this budding poppy
with the darkness that flows in your veins,
because you work with eyes closed
so that other eyes may open
and the water may sing,
so that our lives
might be born again.
==========
ODE TO THANKS
Pablo Neruda
Thanks to the word
that says thanks!
Thanks to thanks,
word
that melts
iron and snow!
The world is a threatening place
until
thanks
makes the rounds
from one pair of lips to another,
soft as a bright
feather
and sweet as a petal of sugar,
filling the mouth with its sound
or else a mumbled
whisper.
Life becomes human again:
it’s no longer an open window.
A bit of brightness
strikes into the forest,
and we can sing again beneath the leaves.
Thanks, you’re the medicine we take
to save us from
the bite of scorn.
Your light brightens the altar of harshness.
Or maybe
a tapestry
known
to far distant peoples.
Travelers
fan out
into the wilds,
and in the jungle
of strangers,
merci
rings out
while the hustling train
changes countries,
sweeping away borders,
then spasibo
clinging to pointy
volcanoes, to fire and freezing cold,
or danke, yes! and gracias, and
the world turns into a table:
a single word has wiped it clean,
plates and glasses gleam,
silverware tinkles,
and the tablecloth is as broad as a plain.
Thank you, thanks,
for going out and returning,
for rising up
and settling down.
We know, thanks,
that you don’t fill every space-
you’re only a word-
but
where your little petal
appears
the daggers of pride take cover,
and there’s a penny’s worth of smiles.
========
THE TIGER
Pablo Neruda
I am the tiger
I lie in wait for you among leaves
broad as ingots
of wet mineral.
The white river grows
beneath the fog. You come.
Naked you submerge.
I wait.
Then in a leap
of fire, blood, teeth,
with a claw slash I tear away
your bosom, your hips.
I drink your blood, I break
your limbs one by one.
And I remain watching
for years in the forest
over your bones, your ashes,
motionless, far
from hatred and anger,
disarmed in your death,
crossed by lianas,
motionless in the rain,
relentless sentinel
of my murderous love.