Pablo Neruda / Ode To A Naked Beauty

Ode To A Naked Beauty

By Pablo Neruda

With chaste heart, and pure
eyes
I celebrate you, my beauty,
restraining my blood
so that the line
surges and follows
your contour,
and you bed yourself in my verse,
as in woodland, or wave-spume:
earth's perfume,
sea's music.

Nakedly beautiful,
whether it is your feet, arching
at a primal touch
of sound or breeze,
or your ears,
tiny spiral shells
from the splendour of America's oceans.
Your breasts also,
of equal fullness, overflowing
with the living light
and, yes,
winged
your eyelids of silken corn
that disclose
or enclose
the deep twin landscapes of your eyes.

The line of your back
separating you
falls away into paler regions
then surges
to the smooth hemispheres
of an apple,
and goes splitting
your loveliness
into two pillars
of burnt gold, pure alabaster,
to be lost in the twin clusters of your feet,
from which, once more, lifts and takes fire
the double tree of your symmetry:
flower of fire, open circle of candles,
swollen fruit raised
over the meeting of earth and ocean.

Your body - from what substances
agate, quartz, ears of wheat,
did it flow, was it gathered,
rising like bread
in the warmth,
and signalling hills
silvered,
valleys of a single petal, sweetnesses
of velvet depth,
until the pure, fine, form of woman
thickened
and rested there?

It is not so much light that falls
over the world
extended by your body
its suffocating snow,
as brightness, pouring itself out of you,
as if you were
burning inside.

Under your skin the moon is alive

Pablo Neruda / Your hands

Your hands

by Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda / Tus manos

When your hands leap
towards mine, love,
what do they bring me in flight?
Why did they stop
at my lips, so suddenly,
why do I know them,
as if once before,
I have touched them,
as if, before being,
they travelled
my forehead, my waist?

Their smoothness came
winging through time,
over the sea and the smoke,
over the Spring,
and when you laid
your hands on my chest
I knew those wings
of the gold doves,
I knew that clay,
and that colour of grain.

The years of my life
have been roadways of searching,
a climbing of stairs,
a crossing of reefs.
Trains hurled me onwards
waters recalled me,
on the surface of grapes
it seemed that I touched you.
Wood, of a sudden,
made contact with you,
the almond-tree summoned
your hidden smoothness,
until both your hands
closed on my chest,
like a pair of wings
ending their flight.

Pablo Neruda / The Fickle One

THE FICKLE ONE

By Pablo Neruda


My eyes went away from me 
following a dark girl who went by.

She was made of black mother-of-pearl, 
made of dark-purple grapes, 
and she lashed my blood 
with her tail of fire.

After them all
I go.

A pale blonde went by 
like a golden plant 
swaying her gifts. 
And my mouth went 
like a wave 
discharging on her breast 
lightningbolts of blood.

After them all 
I go.

But to you, without my moving, 
without seeing you, distant you, 
go my blood and my kisses, 
my dark one and my fair one, 
my tall one and my little one, 
my broad one and my slender one, 
my ugly one, my beauty,

made of all the gold 
and of all the silver, 
made of all the wheat 
and of all the earth, 
made of all the water 
of the sea waves, 
made for my arms, 
made for my kisses, 
made for my soul.

Pablo Neruda / Entrance into wood

Entrance into wood

by Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda / Entrada a la madera

Scarcely with my reason, with my fingers
with slow waters indolently swamped,
I fall into the realm of forget-me-nots,
into a tenacious air of mournfulness,
a decayed forgotten hall
and a cluster of bitter clover.

I fall into the shadows, to the core,
of shattered things,
and I see spiders, and I graze on thickets
of secret inconclusive woods,
and I pace through soaked, uprooted fibers
at the living heart of matter and silence.

Oh lovely matter, oh rose of dry wings,
as I drown I cling to your petals
my feet are burning with fatigue,
I kneel in your harsh cathedral
beating my lips with an angel.

It is because I am myself
faced with your color of world,
faced with your pale dead swords,
faced with your united hearts,
faced with your silent multitude.

I am the one facing your wave of dying fragrances,
wrapped in autumn and resistance;
about to take a funeral journey
along the ridges of yellow scars;
I with my lamentations that have no genesis
hungry, sleepless, alone
arriving at your mysterious essence.

I see the course of your petrified currents,
the growth of frozen, interrupted hands.
I hear your oceanic vegetation
rustling - shaken by night and fury
and I feel the leaves dying inward - to the very core
fusing their green substances
to your abandoned immobility.

Pores, veins, rings of sweetness,
weight, silent temperatures,
arrows piercing your fallen soul,
beings asleep in your thick mouth
shreds of sweet consumed pulp,
ashes filled with extinguished souls,
gather to me, to my measureless dream,
fall into my bedroom where night falls
and endlessly falls like broken water
and bind me to your life and to your death

and to your docile substances,
to your dead neutral doves,
and let us make fire, and silence, and sound,
and let us burn, and be silent, and bells."

Ode to Wine by Pablo Neruda

 

Ode To Wine
By Pablo Neruda

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.

Lost In The Forest by Pablo Neruda

 

Lost In The Forest
by Pablo Neruda

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.

 

Pablo Neruda’s Extraordinary Life, in an Illustrated Love Letter to Language

BY MARIA POPOVA

Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda (July 12, 1904–September 23, 1973) was not only one of the greatest poets in human history, but also a man of extraordinary insight into the human spirit — take, for instance, his remarkable reflection on what a childhood encounter taught him about why we make art, quite possibly the most beautiful metaphor for the creative impulse ever committed to paper.

As a lover both of Neruda’s enduring genius and of intelligent children’s books, especially ones celebrating the lives of luminaries — such as the wonderful illustrated life-stories of Albert Einstein and Julia Child— I was instantly smitten with Pablo Neruda: Poet of the People (public library) by Monica Brown, with absolutely stunning illustrations and hand-lettering by artist Julie Paschkis.

The story begins with the poet’s birth in Chile in 1904 with the given name of Ricardo Eliecer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto — to evade his father’s disapproval of his poetry, he came up with the pen name “Pablo Neruda” at the age of sixteen when he first began publishing his work — and traces his evolution as a writer, his political awakening as an activist, his deep love of people and language and the luminosity of life.

Neftalí wasn’t very good at soccer or at throwing acorns like his friends, but he loved to read and discovered magic between the pages.

Embedded in the story is a sweet reminder of what books do for the soul and a heartening assurance that creative genius isn’t the product of conforming to common standards of excellence but of finding one’s element.

In fact, the book is as much a celebration of Neruda as it is a love letter to language itself — swirling through Paschkis’s vibrant illustrations are words both English and Spanish, beautiful words like “fathom” and “plummet” and “flicker” and “sigh” and “azul.”

Pablo Neruda: Poet of the People is exuberant and enchanting in its entirety. Complement it with Bon Appetit! The Delicious Life of Julia Child, written and illustrated by Jessie Hartland, and On a Beam of Light: A Story of Albert Einstein, written by Jennifer Berne and illustrated by Vladimir Radunsky, then treat yourself to this bewitching reading of Neruda’s “Ode to the Book.”

THE MARGINALIAN

Pablo Neruda / Poet of the People

 

Pablo Neruda by David Levine

Pablo Neruda 

Poet of the People

CHILDREN'S BOOKS

I'm a huge fan of books that introduce children to important artists they otherwise wouldn't encounter until they are older. Books like this plant the seeds of curiosity in the arts that will take root as they grow. This lovely book written by Monica Brown presents the life of Pablo Neruda, from his childhood in Chile to his activism as an adult. The illustrations by Julie Paschkisswirl and flow with hand-drawn words in Spanish and English, washing like a river of poetry through the pages. Words such as "Silvery" and "existencia" and "luminous" and "plummet" create a sensuous second course of language to accompany the simple text that touches on his life story.

My first encounter with Pablo Neruda's work was in junior high. I bought a small illustrated copy of Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, translated by W.S. Merwin and illustrated by Jan Thompson Dicks. I remember carrying it around in my backpack from class to class, to disappear into when I wanted to escape the awkward landscape of post-childhood teenage anxiety. I still have it, and my understanding shifts and deepens every few years as I come back to it.

Poet of the People tells the story of a man who loved the world and wrote about it in a way that brought beauty and hope in his reader's lives in prose that is simple for children but with a poetry of its own: "He wrote about scissors and thimbles and chairs and rings. He wrote about buttons and feathers and shoes and hats. He wrote about velvet cloth and the color of the sea."

I love the page which shows him as a child reading when other kids were playing sports. "He loved to read and discover magic between the pages of books." The illustration that accompanies this text flows with the names of other important authors, all the inspiration Neruda drew from. The words are vertically climbing up tree trunks, symbolizing ideas taking root and growing strong in his mind.

It closes with an Authors Note summary of Neruda's life. It contains the quote from poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, "... he carries his poetry to the people as simply and calmly as a loaf of bread."

GRADE LEVEL: 1 - 

BOOKHEARTED