Pablo Neruda’s “Ode to the Book”

BIOGRAPHY

“When I close a book I open life… I learned about life from life itself, love I learned in a single kiss…”

BY MARIA POPOVA

“A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic,” cosmic sage Carl Sagan memorably proclaimed. Books, indeed, are worthy of the deepest kind of cosmic awe, awe so profound it borders on the ineffable — so much so that only the most articulate of poets can fully capture its expansive magnitude. To celebrate National Poetry Month, I asked the inimitable Tom O’Bedlam — whose mesmerizing voice you might recall from “Gabriel” by Adrienne Rich and “Antilamentation” by Dorianne Laux — to read “Ode to the Book” by Pablo Neruda, translated by Nathaniel Tarn and found in the anthology Selected Poems (public library). Enjoy:

When I close a book
I open life.
I hear
faltering cries
among harbors.
Copper ingots
slide down sand-pits
to Tocopilla.
Night time.
Among the islands
our ocean
throbs with fish,
touches the feet, the thighs,
the chalk ribs
of my country.
The whole of night
clings to its shores, by dawn
it wakes up singing
as if it had excited a guitar.

The ocean’s surge is calling.
The wind
calls me
and Rodriguez calls,
and Jose Antonio–
I got a telegram
from the “Mine” Union
and the one I love
(whose name I won’t let out)
expects me in Bucalemu.

No book has been able
to wrap me in paper,
to fill me up
with typography,
with heavenly imprints
or was ever able
to bind my eyes,
I come out of books to people orchards
with the hoarse family of my song,
to work the burning metals
or to eat smoked beef
by mountain firesides.
I love adventurous
books,
books of forest or snow,
depth or sky
but hate
the spider book
in which thought
has laid poisonous wires
to trap the juvenile
and circling fly.
Book, let me go.
I won’t go clothed
in volumes,
I don’t come out
of collected works,
my poems
have not eaten poems–
they devour
exciting happenings,
feed on rough weather,
and dig their food
out of earth and men.
I’m on my way
with dust in my shoes
free of mythology:
send books back to their shelves,
I’m going down into the streets.
I learned about life
from life itself,
love I learned in a single kiss
and could teach no one anything
except that I have lived
with something in common among men,
when fighting with them,
when saying all their say in my song.

Tom, whose exquisite spoken verse you can hear on YouTube, shares some words of wisdom on the fundamental challenge of reading poetry in translation:

Translations of free verse are particularly hard to read. The original poems have flow and melody — these are usually lost in translation. The translator creates phrases that are really difficult to utter with confidence and it’s always hard to choose a safe path through the syntax.

And yet the stroll along the path he takes us on feels effortless and beautiful — what a gift.

BRAIN PICKING