Pablo Neruda / Plenary Powers

Plenary Powers

by Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda / Plenos poderes

For the sun’s pure power, I write, for the full sea,
for the full and open road, wherever I can I sing,
only the vagrant night detains me
but I gain space in that interruption,
I gain shadow for lengths of time.

Night’s black wheat grows
while my eyes measure the field.
I forge keys from dawn to dusk:
I search for locks in the darkness
and I go throwing open ruined gates to the sea
until the wardrobes are full of foam.

I never tire of going and returning,
death does not stop me with its stone,
I never tire of presence and absence.

Sometimes I ask myself if it was from
my father or my mother or the mountains
I inherited these mineral tasks,

veins of a burning ocean,
and I know I go on, and go on to go on,
and I sing to sing on, and to sing.

Nothing explains what happens
when I close my eyes and circle
as if between two undersea channels,
one lifts me up to die in its branches
and the other sings so I might sing.

So then, I am composed of absence
and akin to the sea that assaults the reef
with its briny globules of whiteness
and takes back the stone into the wave.
So that whatever of death surrounds me
opens in me the window on life
and in the full paroxysm I am sleeping.
To the full light I go on through the shadow.

Pablo Neruda / It is Born

It is Born

by Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda / Nace

Here I came to the very edge
where nothing at all needs saying,
everything is absorbed through weather and the sea,
and the moon swam back,
its rays all silvered,
and time and again the darkness would be broken
by the crash of a wave,
and every day on the balcony of the sea,
wings open, fire is born,
and everything is blue again like morning.

From Plenos Poderes / Fully Empowered (1962)

Pablo Neruda / For everybody

For everybody 

by Pablo Neruda
Translated by Jodey Bateman

Pablo Neruda / Para todos

I can't tell you quickly
What I ought to tell you,
Say man, pardon me, you'll know
That even though you don't listen to my words
I never took time off to weep or sleep
And that I've been with you when I couldn't see you
For a long time and I'll be there till the end.

I understand that many people are thinking,
"Say, what's Pablo doing?" I'm here.
If you look for me on this street
You'll find me with my violin
Ready to sing
And to die.

It's nobody's problem
Not for them, nor for you,
And if you listen well, in the rain,
You will be able to hear
That I come back and go away and stay.
And you'll know when I must leave.

If my words aren't heard
Don't doubt that I'm the one I was.
There is no silence that doesn't end.
When the moment arrives, wait for me,
And let everyone know that I'm coming
To the street, with my violin.

From Plenos Poderes / Fully Empowered (1962)

Pablo Neruda / To wash a child

To wash a child

by Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda / Para lavar a un niño

Only the most ancient love on earth
will wash and comb the statue of the children,
straighten the feet and knees.
The water rises, the soap slithers,
and the pure body comes up to breathe
the air of flowers and motherhood.

Oh, the sharp watchfulness,
the sweet deception,
the lukewarm struggle!

Now the hair is a tangled
pelt criscrossed by charcoal,
by sawdust and oil,
soot, wiring, crabs,
until love, in its patience,
sets up buckets and sponges,
combs and towels,
and, out of scrubbing and combing, amber,
primal scrupulousness, jasmines,
has emerged the child, newer still,
running from the mother's arms
to clamber again on its cyclone,
go looking for mud, oil, urine and ink,
hurt itself, roll about on the stones.
Thurs, newly washed, the child springs into life,
for later, it will have time for nothing more
than keeping clean, but with the life lacking.

From Plenos Poderes / Fully Empowered (1962)

Pablo Neruda / Water

WATER

by Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda / Agua

Everything on the earth bristled, the bramble
pricked and the green thread
nibbled away, the petal fell, falling
until the only flower was the falling itself.
Water is another matter,
has no direction but its own bright grace,
runs through all imaginable colors,
takes limpid lessons
from stone,
and in those functionings plays out
the unrealized ambitions of the foam.

From Plenos Poderes / Fully Empowered (1962)

Pablo Neruda / The Word

The Word

By Pablo Neruda

BIOGRAPHY

Translated by Stephen Mitchell

Pablo Neruda / La palabra

The word was born
in the blood,
it grew in the dark body, pulsing,
and took flight with the lips and mouth.

Farther away and nearer,
still, still it came
from dead fathers and from wandering races,
from territories that had become stone,
that had tired of their poor tribes,
because when grief set out on the road
the people went and arrived
and united new land and water
to sow their word once again.
And that's why the inheritance is this:
this is the air that connects us
with the buried man and with the dawn
of new beings that haven't yet arisen.

Still the atmosphere trembles
with the first word
produced
with panic and groaning.
It emerged
from the darkness
and even now there is no thunder
that thunders with the iron sound
of that word,
the first
word uttered:
perhaps it was just a whisper, a raindrop,
but its cascade still falls and falls.

Later on, meaning fills the word.
It stayed pregnant and was filled with lives,
everything was births and sounds:
affirmation, clarity, strength,
negation, destruction, death:
the name took on all the powers
and combined existence with essence
in its electric beauty.

Human word, syllable, flank
of long light and hard silver,
hereditary goblet that receives
the communications of the blood:
it is here that silence was formed by
the whole of the human word
and not to speak is to die among beings:
language extends out to the hair,
the mouth speaks without moving the lips:
suddenly the eyes are words.

I take the word and move
through it, as if it were
only a human form,
its lines delight me and I sail
in each resonance of language:
I utter and I am
and across the boundary of words,
without speaking, I approach silence.

I drink to the word, raising
a word or crystalline cup,
in it I drink
the wine of language
or unfathomable water,
maternal source of all words,
and cup and water and wine
give rise to my song
because the name is origin
and green life: it is blood,
the blood that expresses its substance,
and thus its unrolling is prepared:
words give crystal to the crystal,
blood to the blood,
and give life to life.


From Plenos Poderes / Fully Empowered (1962)

Pablo Neruda / Bird

BIRD

by Pablo Neruda
BIOGRAPHY

Pablo Neruda / Pájaro

It was passed from one bird to another,
the whole gift of the day.
The day went from flute to flute,
went dressed in vegetation,
in flights which opened a tunnel
through the wind would pass
to where birds were breaking open
the dense blue air -
and there, night came in.

When I returned from so many journeys,
I stayed suspended and green
between sun and geography -
I saw how wings worked,
how perfumes are transmitted
by feathery telegraph,
and from above I saw the path,
the springs and the roof tiles,
the fishermen at their trades,
the trousers of the foam;
I saw it all from my green sky.
I had no more alphabet
than the swallows in their courses,
the tiny, shining water
of the small bird on fire
which dances out of the pollen.

From Plenos Poderes / Fully Empowered (1962)

Pablo Neruda / The poet´s Obligation

The poet´s Obligation

by Pablo Neruda
BIOGRAPHY
Translated by Alastair Reid

Pablo Neruda / Deber del poeta (De otros mundos)

To whoever is not listening to the sea

this Friday morning, to whoever is cooped up
in house or office, factory or woman
or street or mine or dry prison cell,
to him I come, and without speaking or looking
I arrive and open the door of his prison,
and a vibration starts up, vague and insistent,
a long rumble of thunder adds itself
to the weight of the planet and the foam,
the groaning rivers of the ocean rise,
the star vibrates quickly in its corona
and the sea beats, dies, and goes on beating.

So, drawn on by my destiny,
I ceaselessly must listen to and keep
the sea's lamenting in my consciousness,
I must feel the crash of the hard water
and gather it up in a perpetual cup
so that, wherever those in prison may be,
wherever they suffer the sentence of the autumn,
I may be present with an errant wave,
I may move in and out of windows,
and hearing me, eyes may lift themselves,
asking "How can I reach the sea?"
And I will pass to them, saying nothing,
the starry echoes of the wave,
a breaking up of foam and quicksand,
a rustling of salt withdrawing itself,
the grey cry of seabirds on the coast.

So, through me, freedom and the sea
will call in answer to the shrouded heart.

From Plenos Poderes / Fully Empowered (1962)