about pablo neruda

[kimshasa]

hi everyone, as a introductory note I would like to share with you guys my discovery of the day.Most of you probably already know about Chilean poet Pablo Neruda... I found this little editorial today with one of his poems.... http://vagazine.com/2013/03/clenched-soul-pablo-neruda/ and have been reading about him the whole day... I am not really good with Spanish so can't really read on the poet's original language but do you guy know of any good English or French translation...books?

thank you :angel:

[billy]

can't say neruda is my cup of tea though i know that many think him great. if you just google pablo neruda you'll get most of his poetry in english. the poetry foundation has some of his works. wiki will have a list of his works and possibly any translations. they'll also have his bio etc.

[rayheinrich]

He's definitely my cup of tea; and... with a bit of lemon:


A Lemon - Pablo Neruda (translated by Angel Flores)

Out of lemon flowers
loosed
on the moonlight, love's
lashed and insatiable
essences,
sodden with fragrance,
the lemon tree's yellow
emerges,
the lemons
move down
from the tree's planetarium

Delicate merchandise!
The harbors are big with it-
bazaars
for the light and the
barbarous gold.
We open
the halves
of a miracle,
and a clotting of acids
brims
into the starry
divisions:
creation's
original juices,
irreducible, changeless,
alive:
so the freshness lives on
in a lemon,
in the sweet-smelling house of the rind,
the proportions, arcane and acerb.

Cutting the lemon
the knife
leaves a little cathedral:
alcoves unguessed by the eye
that open acidulous glass
to the light; topazes
riding the droplets,
altars,
aromatic facades.

So, while the hand
holds the cut of the lemon,
half a world
on a trencher,
the gold of the universe
wells
to your touch:
a cup yellow
with miracles,
a breast and a nipple
perfuming the earth;
a flashing made fruitage,
the diminutive fire of a planet.


P.S. There's a bunch of his poems here:
http://www.poemhunter.com/pablo-neruda/

[rowens]

I like The Captain's Verses all right. And a book in the local library here called, The Yellow Heart.

[serge gurkski]

Good morning!

Yo, I doubt, that Kim Shasa, but for you who read(s) this, I want to add a link to the nothing less than brilliant translation of Neruda's poetry by
A. S. Kline:

http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR...Neruda.htm

¡Chinchín!
serge g

[rayheinrich]

A Dog Has Died - Pablo Neruda (Trans: Alfred Yankauer)

My dog has died.
I buried him in the garden
next to a rusted old machine.

Some day I'll join him right there,
but now he's gone with his shaggy coat,
his bad manners and his cold nose,
and I, the materialist, who never believed
in any promised heaven in the sky
for any human being,
I believe in a heaven I'll never enter.
Yes, I believe in a heaven for all dogdom
where my dog waits for my arrival
waving his fan-like tail in friendship.

Ai, I'll not speak of sadness here on earth,
of having lost a companion
who was never servile.
His friendship for me, like that of a porcupine
withholding its authority,
was the friendship of a star, aloof,
with no more intimacy than was called for,
with no exaggerations:
he never climbed all over my clothes
filling me full of his hair or his mange,
he never rubbed up against my knee
like other dogs obsessed with sex.

No, my dog used to gaze at me,
paying me the attention I need,
the attention required
to make a vain person like me understand
that, being a dog, he was wasting time,
but, with those eyes so much purer than mine,
he'd keep on gazing at me
with a look that reserved for me alone
all his sweet and shaggy life,
always near me, never troubling me,
and asking nothing.

Ai, how many times have I envied his tail
as we walked together on the shores of the sea
in the lonely winter of Isla Negra
where the wintering birds filled the sky
and my hairy dog was jumping about
full of the voltage of the sea's movement:
my wandering dog, sniffing away
with his golden tail held high,
face to face with the ocean's spray.

Joyful, joyful, joyful,
as only dogs know how to be happy
with only the autonomy
of their shameless spirit.

There are no good-byes for my dog who has died,
and we don't now and never did lie to each other.

So now he's gone and I buried him,
and that's all there is to it.

...

[Heartafire]

Beautiful ray, thank you for posting this lovely poem. His writing never ceases to amaze and captivate me. He was brilliant. If I had to pick a poem that stands out for me it would be A Song Of Despair, but how can one chose from all the beauty and passion that he gifted.

[Keith]

I once posted a short piece of Prose I was so inspired by this Poem

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