Pablo Neruda / What Spain was like

What Spain was like

by Pablo Neruda

Translated by Jodey Bateman

Pablo Neruda / Cómo era España

Spain was a taut, dry drum-head

Daily beating a dull thud
Flatlands and eagle's nest
Silence lashed by the storm.

How much, to the point of weeping, in my soul
I love your hard soil, your poor bread,
Your poor people, how much in the deep place
Of my being there is still the lost flower
Of your wrinkled villages, motionless in time
And your metallic meadows
Stretched out in the moonlight through the ages,
Now devoured by a false god.

All your confinement, your animal isolation
While you are still conscious
Surrounded by the abstract stones of silence,
Your rough wine, your smooth wine
Your violent and dangerous vineyards.

Solar stone, pure among the regions
Of the world, Spain streaked
With blood and metal, blue and victorious
Proletarian Spain, made of petals and bullets
Unique, alive, asleep - resounding.
(...)

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."

Pablo Neruda / Being born in the woods

Being born in the woods

by Pablo Neruda

Translated by W.S.Merwin

Pablo Neruda / Naciendo en los bosques

When the rice withdraws from the earth

the grains of its flour,
when the wheat hardens its little hip-joints
and lifts its face of a thousand hands,
I make my way to the grove where the woman and the man embrace,
to touch the innumerable sea
of what continues.

I am not a brother of the implement carried on the tide
as in a cradle of embattled mother-of-pearl:
I do not tremble in the territory of the dying garbage,
I do not wake at the shock of the dark
that is frightened by the hoarse leaf-stalks of the sudden bell,
I cannot be, I am not the traveller
under whose shoes the last remnants of the wind throb
and the waves come back rigid out of time to die.

I carry in my hand the dove that sleeps recumbent in the seed
and in its dense ferment of lime and blood
August lives,
raised out of its deep goblet the month lives:
with my hand I encircle the new shadow of the wing that is growing:
the root and the feather that will form the thicket of tomorrow.

The immense growth of the drop, and the eyelid yearning to be open
never diminish, neither beside the balcony of iron hands

nor in the maritime winter of the abandoned, nor in my late footstep:
for I was born in order to be born, to contain the steps
of all that approaches, of all that beats on my breast like a new trembling heart.

Lives resting beside my clothes like parallel doves
or contained in my own existence and in my lawless sound
in order to return to being, to lay hold on the air denuded of its leaf
and on the moist birth of the soil in the wreath: how long
can I return and be, how long can the odour
of the most deeply buried flowers, of the waves most finely
pulverized on the high rocks, preserve in me their homeland
where they can return to be fury and perfume?

Pablo Neruda / Death alone

Death alone

By Pablo Neruda

BIOGRAPHY

Translated by Nathaniel Tarn

Pablo Neruda / Sólo la muerte

There are lone cemeteries.
tombs full of soundless bones,
the heart threading a tunnel,
a dark, dark tunnel:
like a wreck we die to the very core,
as if drowning at the heart
or collapsing inwards from skin to soul.
There are corpses
clammy slabs for feet,
there is death in the bones,
like a pure sound,
a bark without its dog,
out of certain bells, tombs
swelling in this humidity like lament or rain.
I see, when alone at times,
coffins under sail
setting out with the pale dead, women in their dead braids,
bakers as white as angels,
thoughtful girls married to notaries,
coffins ascending the vertical river of the dead,
the wine-dark river to its source,
with their sails swollen with the sound of death,
filled with the silent noise of death.
Death is drawn to sound
like a slipper without a foot, a suit without its wearer,
comes to knock with a ring, stoneless and fingerless.
comes to shout without a mouth, a tongue, without a throat.
Nevertheless its footsteps sound,
and its clothes echo, hushed like a tree.
I do not know, I am ignorant, I hardly see
but it seems to me that its song has the colour of wet violets,
violets well used to the earth,
since the face of death is green,
and the gaze of death green
with the etched moisture of a violet's leaf
and its grave colour of exasperated winter.
But death goes about the earth also, riding a broom
lapping the ground in search of the dead -
death is in the broom,
it is the tongue of death looking for the dead,
the needle of death looking for thread.
Death lies in our cots:
in the lazy mattresses, the black blankets,
lives at full stretch and then suddenly blows,
blows sound unknown filling out the sheets
and there are beds sailing into a harbour
where death is waiting, dressed as an admiral.

Pablo Neruda / The Unearthed

The Unearthed

by Pablo Neruda
BIOGRAPHY

Pablo Neruda / El desenterrado

Homenaje al Conde de Villamediana 

Homage to the Count of Villamediana

Cuando la tierra llena de párpados mojados
When the earth is full of wet eyelids
se haga ceniza y duro aire cernido,
becoming ash and tough air sifting
y los terrones secos y las aguas,
and the clods dry and the waters,
los pozos, los metales,
the wells, the metals,
por fin devuelvan sus gastados muertos,
finally return their worn out dead,
quiero una oreja, un ojo,
I want an ear, an eye,
un corazón herido dando tumbos,
a wounded heart giving tumbles,
un hueco de puñal hace ya tiempo hundido
a hollow of dagger already time sunk
en un cuerpo hace tiempo exterminado y solo,
in a body some time ago exterminated and alone,
quiero unas manos, una ciencia de uñas,
I want a few hands, a science of fingernails,
una boca de espanto y amapolas muriendo,
a mouth of fright and poppies dying,
quiero ver levantarse del polvo inútil
I want to see rising of the useless dust
un ronco árbol de venas sacudidas,
a hoarse tree of shaken veins,
yo quiero de la tierra más amarga,
I want of the earth so bitter,
entre azufre y turquesa y olas rojas
between sulfur and turquoise and red waves
y torbellinos de carbón callado,
and maelstroms of silent coal,
quiero una carne despertar sus huesos
I want to a meat to revive their bones
aullando llamas,
howling flames,
y un especial olfato correr en busca de algo,
and a special smell running in search of something,
y una vista cegada por la tierra
and a view blinded by the earth
correr detrás de los ojos oscuros,
running behind the dark eyes,
y un oído, de pronto, como una ostra furiosa,
and an ear, suddenly, like a furious oyster,
rabiosa, desmedida,
mad, excessive
levantarse hacia el trueno,
rising up towards the thunder
y un tacto puro, entre sales perdido,
and a pure touch, between lost salts,
salir tocando pechos y azucenas, de pronto.
escape touching breasts and lilies, suddenly.


Oh día de los muertos! oh distancia hacia donde
Oh day of the dead! Oh distance toward where
la espiga muerta yace con su olor a relámpago,
dead spike of grain lies with its smell of lightning,
oh galerías entregando un nido
oh game cock farm delivering a nest
y un pez y una mejilla y una espada,
and a fish and a cheek and a sword,
todo molido entre las confusiones,
all ground between the confusion,
todo sin esperanzas decaído,
all without hope decayed,
todo en la sima seca alimentado
all in the dry pit fed
entre los dientes de la tierra dura.
between the teeth of the hard earth.

Y la pluma a su pájaro suave,
And the feather to its soft bird,
y la luna a su cinta, y el perfume a su forma,
and the moon to its ribbon, and the perfume to its form,
y, entre las rosas, el desenterrado,
and, among the roses, the unearthed,
el hombre lleno de algas minerales,
the man full of mineral algae,
y a sus dos agujeros sus ojos retornando.
and to their two holes, his eyes returning.
Está desnudo,
He is naked,
sus ropas no se encuentran en el polvo,
his clothes are not found in the dust,
y su armadura rota se ha deslizado al fondo del infierno,
and his broken armor has slipped to the bottom of hell,
y su barba ha crecido como el aire en otoño,
and his beard has grown as the air in autumn,
y hasta su corazón quiere morder manzanas.
and even his heart wants to bite apples.

Cuelgan de sus rodillas y sus hombros
They hang by his knees and his shoulders
adherencias de olvido, hebras del suelo,
adhesions of oblivion, strands of the soil,
zonas de vidrio roto y aluminio,
areas of broken glass and aluminum,
cáscaras de cadáveres amargos,
husks of bitter corpses,
bolsillos de agua convertida en hierro:
pockets of water turned into iron:
y reuniones de terribles bocas
and meetings of terrible mouths
derramadas y azules,
wastefulness and blues,
y ramas de coral acongojado
the branches of coral heart broken
hacen corona a su cabeza verde,
makes a crown for his green head,
y tristes vegetales fallecidos
and sad deceased plants
y maderas nocturnas le rodean,
and night woods surrounds him,
y en él aún duermen palomas entreabiertas
and in it even sleep doves ajar
con ojos de cemento subterráneo.
with eyes of underground cement.

Conde dulce, en la niebla,
Sweet Count, in the fog,
oh recién despertado de las minas,
oh newly awakened of the mines,
oh recién seco del agua sin río,
oh newly dry of the water without river,
oh recién sin arañas!
oh newly without spiders!

Crujen minutos en tus pies naciendo,
Minutes crackle in your feet being born,
tu sexo asesinado se incorpora,
your gender assassinated is incorporated,
y levantas la mano en donde vive
and you raise your hand where you live
todavía el secreto de la espuma.
still the secret of the foam.


Pablo Neruda en Residencia en la tierra

Libro 2 (1931-1935): Parte V

Pablo Neruda / Knigh Alone

Knigh Alone
BIOGRAPHY

by Pablo Neruda

English translation by Thayne Tuason

Pablo Neruda / Caballero Solo

Los jóvenes homosexuales y las muchachas amorosas,
The homosexual young people and the loving girls,
y las largas viudas que sufren el delirante insomnio,
and the long widows that suffer the delirious insomnia,
y las jóvenes señoras preñadas hace treinta horas,
and young pregnant women do thirty hours,
y los roncos gatos que cruzan mi jardín en tinieblas,
and the hoarse cats that cross my garden in darkness,
como un collar de palpitantes ostras sexuales
like a necklace of pulsating sexual oysters
rodean mi residencia solitaria,
they surround my solitary residence,
como enemigos establecidos contra mi alma,
like established enemies against my soul,
como conspiradores en traje de dormitorio
as conspirators in costume of bedroom
que cambiaran largos besos espesos por consigna.
that exchanged long kisses thick of devotion.

El radiante verano conduce a los enamorados
The radiant summer leads to the lovers
en uniformes regimientos melancólicos,
in melancholy uniform regiments,
hechos de gordas y flacas y alegres y tristes parejas:
made of fat and thin and happy and sad couples:
bajo los elegantes cocoteros, junto al océano y la luna,
under the elegant coconut palms, next to the ocean and the moon,
hay una continua vida de pantalones y polleras,
there is one continuous life of pants and skirts,
un rumor de medias de seda acariciadas,
a rumor of silk stockings caressed,
y senos femeninos que brillan como ojos.
and female breasts that sparkle like eyes.

El pequeño empleado, después de mucho,
The small employee, after a lot,
después del tedio semanal, y las novelas leídas de noche en cama
after the weekly tedium, and the novels read at night in bed
ha definitivamente seducido a su vecina,
has definitively seduced his neighbor,
y la lleva a los miserables cinematógrafos
and it leads to the miserable cinematographers
donde los héroes son potros o príncipes apasionados,
where the heroes are foals or passionate princes,
y acaricia sus piernas llenas de dulce vello
and he caresses her legs full of sweet hair
con sus ardientes y húmedas manos que huelen a cigarrillo.
with his hot and wet hands that smell of cigarette.

Los atardeceres del seductor y las noches de los esposos
The sunsets of the seducer and the nights of the spouses
se unen como dos sábanas sepultándome,
join together as two sheets burying me,
y las horas después del almuerzo en que los jóvenes estudiantes
and the hours after the lunch in which the young students
y las jóvenes estudiantes, y los sacerdotes se masturban,
and the young students, and the priests masturbate,
y los animales fornican directamente,
and the animals directly fornicate,
y las abejas huelen a sangre, y las moscas zumban coléricas,
and bees smell to blood, and flies buzz angry,
y los primos juegan extrañamente con sus primas,
and the boy cousins play strangely with their girl cousins,
y los médicos miran con furia al marido de la joven paciente,
and the doctors look furiously at the husband of the young woman patient,
y las horas de la mañana en que el profesor, como descuido,
and the hours of the morning in which the professor, like carelessness,
cumple con su deber conyugal y desayuña,
complies with his conjugal duty and eats breakfast,
y más aún, los adúlteros, que se aman con verdadero amor
and even more, the adulterers, who love each other with true love
sobre lechos altos y largos como embarcaciones:
on beds high and long like boats:
seguramente, eternamente me rodea
surely, it surrounds me eternally
este gran bosque respiratorio y enredado
this great forest breathing and tangled
con grandes flores como bocas y dentaduras
with great flowers like mouths and teeth
y negras raíces en forma de uñas y zapatos.
and black roots in the form of nails and shoes.

Pablo Neruda
Residencia on Earth (1925-1931) 

Residence I, Parte III,

Pablo Neruda / Taste

Solitudine by Vicenso Giannattasio

TASTE

by Pablo Neruda
BIOGRAPHY

Translated from Spanish by Tayne Tuason

Pablo Neruda / Sabor

Of false astrology, of somewhat mournful customs, 

discharged into the endless and always carried to the side,
I have preserved a tendency, a lonely taste.

Of conversations spent as used wood,
with humility of chairs, with words occupied
in serving like slaves of secondary will,
having that consistency of the milk, of the dead weeks,
of the air chained around the cities.

Who can boast of more solid patience?
The sanity wraps me of compact skin
of a color reunited as a snake
my creatures are born of a long rejection:
ay, with a single alcohol I can dismiss this day
that I have chosen, equal among the terrestrial days.I live filling of a substance of mutual color, silent

as an old mother, a fixed patience
as a shadow of church or repose of bones.
I go filling of those waters arranged profoundly,
prepared, falling asleep in a sad thoughtfulness.

Inside of my guitar there a old air,
dry and resonant, staying, motionless,
as a faithful nutrition, as smoke:
an element at rest, a oil living:
a bird of severity lives in my head:
a constant angel lives in my sword.

Pablo Neruda
Residencia on Earth (1925-1931) 

Residence I, Parte I

Pablo Neruda / Alliance / Sonata

Alliance (Sonata)

by Pablo Neruda
BIOGRAPHY

English translation by Thayne Tuason

Pablo Neruda / Alianza / Sonata

Of dusty gazes fallen down to the soil
or leaves without sound and entombing.
Of metals without light, with the void,
with the absence of the dead day of coup.
At the top of the hands the dazzle of butterflies,
the start of butterflies whose light has no end.

You were keeping the trail of light, of broken beings
that the sun abandoned, getting dark, throws to the churches.
Stained with glances, with the aim of bees,
your material of unexpected flame fleeing
coming before and after the day and to your family of gold.

The days stalked they cross the secrecy
but fall inside of your voice of light.
Oh proprietress of love, on your rest
I founded my dream, my silent attitude.

With your body of shy number, extended suddenly
until quantities that define the earth,
behind the fight of the white days of space
and chills of slow deaths and withered stimuli,
I feel burn your lap and move your kisses
making fresh swallows in my dream.
Sometimes the fate of your tears amounts
as the age up to my forehead, there
they are striking the waves, being destroyed of death:
its’ movement is damp, depressed, final.

Pablo Neruda /Residencia en la tierra (1925-1932). 

Pablo Neruda
Residencia on Earth (1925-1931) 

Residence I, Parte I

Pablo Neruda / Dead Gallop

Dead Gallop

by Pablo Neruda
BIOGRAPHY

Pablo Neruda / Galope muerto

Like ashes, like oceans gathering themselves,

in the submerged slowness, in what’s unformed,

or like hearing from a high place on the road

the cross-echo of church bells,

holding that sound just off the metal,

confused, weighing down, turning to dust,

in the same mill of forms, too far away,

remembering or never seen,

and the fragrance of plums, rolling to the groun d,

which rot in time, infinitely green.

That everything so quick, so lively, 

immobile, though, like the pulley, wild inside itself,

those wheels in motors, you know.

Existing like dry stitches in the seams of the tree,

silent, encircling, like that,

all the limbs mixing up their tails.

I mean from where, to where, on what shore?

The constant swirl, uncertain, so mute,

like the lilacs around the convent,

or death’s arrival on the ox’s tongue,

who falls in jerks, his guard down, his horns trying to sound. 

That’s why in what’s immobile, stopping oneself to perceive,

then, like an immense fluttering of wings, above,

like dead bees or numbers,

ay, that which my pale heart can’t embrace,

in multitudes, in tears scarcely shed,

and human exertions, storms,

black actions suddenly discovered,

like ice, vast disorder,

oceanic, for me who enters singing,

like a sword among the defenseless.

Now then what is it made of, that surge of doves

there between night and time, like humid ravine?

That sound, already so long,

which falls striping, the roads with stones,

or better yet, when just one hour

expands without warning, extending endlessly. 

Within the ring of summer

the great pumpkins listen once,

stretching out their poignant plants,

of that, of what’s asking so much,

full, dark with heavy drops.

Pablo Neruda / Unity

UNITY

by Pablo Neruda

BIOGRAPHY

translated by Clayton Eshlman

Pablo Neruda / Unidad

There is something dense, united, settled in the depths,
repeating its number, its identical sign.
How it is noted that stones have touched time,
in their refined matter there is an odor of age,
of water brought by the sea, from salt and sleep.
 
I'm encircled by a single thing, a single movement: 
a mineral weight, a honeyed light
cling to the sound of the word "noche":
the tint of wheat, of ivory, of tears,
things of leather, of wood, of wool,
archaic, faded, uniform,
collect around me like walls.

I work quietly, wheeling over myself,
a crow over death, a crow in mourning.
I mediate, isolated in the spread of seasons,
centric, encircled by a silent geometry:
a partial temperature drifts down from the sky,
a distant empire of confused unities
reunites encircling me.

Pablo Neruda / I Explain A Few Things

Pablo Picasso

I Explain A Few Things

By Pablo Neruda
BIOGRAPHY

Pablo Neruda / Explico algunas cosas

You are going to ask: and where are the lilacs?

and the poppy-petalled metaphysics?

and the rain repeatedly spattering

its words and drilling them full

of apertures and birds?

I'll tell you all the news.

I lived in a suburb,

a suburb of Madrid, with bells,

and clocks, and trees.

From there you could look out

over Castille's dry face:

a leather ocean.

My house was called

the house of flowers, because in every cranny

geraniums burst: it was

a good-looking house

with its dogs and children.

                                              Remember, Raul?

Eh, Rafael?

                 Federico, do you remember

from under the ground

my balconies on which

the light of June drowned flowers in your mouth?

Brother, my brother!

Everything

loud with big voices, the salt of merchandises,

pile-ups of palpitating bread,

the stalls of my suburb of Arguelles with its statue

like a drained inkwell in a swirl of hake:

oil flowed into spoons,

a deep baying

of feet and hands swelled in the streets,

metres, litres, the sharp

measure of life,

                           stacked-up fish,

the texture of roofs with a cold sun in which

the weather vane falters,

the fine, frenzied ivory of potatoes,

wave on wave of tomatoes rolling down the sea.

And one morning all that was burning,

one morning the bonfires

leapt out of the earth

devouring human beings -

and from then on fire,

gunpowder from then on,

and from then on blood.

Bandits with planes and Moors,

bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,

bandits with black friars spattering blessings

came through the sky to kill children

and the blood of children ran through the streets

without fuss, like children's blood.

Jackals that the jackals would despise,

stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,

vipers that the vipers would abominate!

Face to face with you I have seen the blood

of Spain tower like a tide

to drown you in one wave

of pride and knives!

Treacherous

generals:

see my dead house,

look at broken Spain :

from every house burning metal flows

instead of flowers,

from every socket of Spain

Spain emerges

and from every dead child a rifle with eyes,

and from every crime bullets are born

which will one day find

the bull's eye of your hearts.

And you'll ask: why doesn't his poetry

speak of dreams and leaves

and 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!

      

Pablo Neruda
Third Residence 1935 - 45   

Pablo Neruda / Walking Around / Videos

Photography by André Kertész

WALKING AROUND

By Pablo Neruda

English Translation by Robert Bly

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.