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Author Topic:   Poetry by Pablo Neruda
proxieme
Knowflake

Posts: 3193
From: Southern 'Bama
Registered: Aug 2002

posted May 09, 2003 05:23 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for proxieme     Edit/Delete Message
Not mine, but a fitting anthem for this forum:

Poetry

And it was at that age ... Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no, they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names,
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,

deciphering
that fire,
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.

And I, infitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
for myself a pure part of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind.

-Pablo Neruda
(Translated form the Spnish by Alastair Reid)

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pearly
Knowflake

Posts: 554
From: Neptune, Milky Way, Universe
Registered: Jun 2002

posted May 09, 2003 09:24 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for pearly     Edit/Delete Message
Yeah Prox!! Thanks again!

I Loooooove Pablo Neruda!

I will post some here too....

Here are two of the many, many I love that I found on the web and I will post more once I get my books out:


Love Sonnet XVII

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

by Pablo Neruda

**********************************************

*edit* on #2- duh, wrong one....you just posted "poetry"....

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juniperb
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posted May 10, 2003 11:38 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for juniperb     Edit/Delete Message
I never read Pablo Neruda`s poetry before; thanks for the introduction & off to find more!

juniperb

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pearly
Knowflake

Posts: 554
From: Neptune, Milky Way, Universe
Registered: Jun 2002

posted May 13, 2003 11:21 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for pearly     Edit/Delete Message
Ah, well be prepared to be swept away!

One of my favorite books by Neruda is '100 Love Sonnets', dedicated and about the love of his life.... his wife Matilde. After you read his dedication to her in the beginning of the book and feel the depth of his aching love for her... you basically cannot help but fall in love with love. If you are a romantic, the poetry in this book will light you on fire! Anyway, the poem posted above is from the book and I'll post a few (ok, maybe several...) more here


These are all poems from the first section "Morning", which I take to mean the beginning of his love...


Love Sonnet III

Bitter love, a violet with its crown
of thorns in a thicket of spiky passions,
spear of sorrow, corolla of rage: how did you come
to conquer my soul? What via dolorosa brought you?

Why did you pour your tender fire
so quickly, over my life's cool leaves?
Who pointed the way to you? What flower,
what rock, what smoke showed you where I live?

Because the Earth shook--it did-, that awful night;
then dawn filled all the goblets with it's wine;
the heavenly sun declared itself;

while inside, a fericious love wound around
and around me- till it pierced me with its thorns, its sword,
slashing a seared road through my heart.


Love Sonnet X

This beauty is soft-- as if music and wood,
agate, cloth, wheat, peaches the light shines through,
had made an ephemeral statue.
And now she sends her freshness out, against the waves.

The sea dabbles at those tanned feet, repeating
their shape, just imprinted in the sand.
And now she is the womanly fire of a rose,
the only bubble the sun and the sea contend against.

Oh, may nothing touch you but the chilly salt!
May not even love disturb that unbroken springtime!
Beautiful woman, echo of the endless foam,

may your statuesque hips in the water make
a new measure-- a swan, a lily--, as you float
your form through that eternal crystal.


Love Sonnet XI

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.

Love Sonnet XV

The earth has known you for a long time now:
you are as firm as bread, or wood;
you are a body, a cluster of absolute substances;
you have an acacia's gravity, the weight of a golden vegetable.

I know you exist, not only because your eyes fly open
and shed their light on things, like an open window-
but also because you were molded in clay, you were fired
in Chillan, in an astounded adobe oven.

Beings: they dissolve like the air, or water, or the cold.
And they are vague, they vanish when time touches them,
as if before death they crumbled into dust.

But you will fall with me like a rock into the grave:
thanks to our love, which will never waste away,
the earth will continue to live.

Love Sonnet XXII

Love, how often I loved you without seeing-
without remembering you-
not recognizing your glance, not knowing you, a gentian
in the wrong place, scorching in the hot noon,
but I loved only the smell of the wheat.

Or maybe I saw you, imagined you lifting a wineglass
in Angol, by the light of the summer's Moon;
or were you the waist of that guitar I strummed
in the shadows, the one that rang like an impetuous sea?

I loved you without knowing I did; I searched to remember you.
I broke into houses to steal your likeness,
though I already knew what you were like. And, suddenly,

when you were there with me I touched you, and my life
stopped: you stood before me, you took dominion like a queen:
like a wildfire in the forest, and the flame is your dominion.


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pearly
Knowflake

Posts: 554
From: Neptune, Milky Way, Universe
Registered: Jun 2002

posted May 13, 2003 11:50 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for pearly     Edit/Delete Message
And a few more from the second section entitled 'Afternoon', which I take to mean in the middle stages of their love...

Love Sonnet XLIII

I hunt for a sign of you in all the others-
In the rapid undulant river of women,
braids, shyly sinking eyes,
light step that slides, sailing through the foam.

Suddenly I think I can make out your nails-
oblong, quick, nieces of a cherry-:
Then it's your hair that passes by, and I think
I see your image- a bonfire, burning in the water.

I searched, but no one else has your rhythms,
your Light, the shady day you brought from the forest;
nobody had your tiny ears.

You are whole--exact--and everything you are is one,
and so I go along, with you I float along, loving
a wide Mississippi toward a feminine sea.

Love Sonnet XLV

Don't go far off, not even for a day, because--
because-- I don't know how to say it: a day is long
and I will be waiting for you, as in an empty station
when the trains are parked off somewhere else, asleep.

Don't leave me, even for an hour, because
then the little drops of anguish will all run together,
the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift
into me, choking my lost heart.

Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve on the beach;
may your eyelids never flutter into the empty distance.
Don't leave me for a second, my dearest,

because in that moment you'll have gone so far
I'll wander mazily over all the Earth, asking,
Will you come back? Will you leave me here , dying?


Love Sonnet XLVI

Of all the stars I admired, drenched
in various rivers and mists,
I chose only the one I love.
Since then I sleep with the night.

Of all the waves, one wave and another wave,
green sea, green chill, branchings of green,
I chose only the one wave,
the indivisible wave of your body.

All the waterdrops, all the roots,
all the threads of light gathered to me here;
they came to me sooner or later.

I wanted your hair, all for myself.
From all the graces my homeland offered
I chose only your savage heart.


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proxieme
Knowflake

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From: Southern 'Bama
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posted May 13, 2003 11:57 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for proxieme     Edit/Delete Message
Groovy pearly

Though I'm currently not in love w/ love, it's still good poetry, so thank you for posting it...
...and any more of Neruda's work that might strike your fancy

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pearly
Knowflake

Posts: 554
From: Neptune, Milky Way, Universe
Registered: Jun 2002

posted May 14, 2003 12:05 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for pearly     Edit/Delete Message
Ok... and just ONE last one (for now ) This was the last poem in section 1, 'Morning'. I thought this could've been written for a Virgo... maybe his wife was a Virgo...?? Anyway, I thought it was cute:


Love Sonnet XXXII

The house this morning--with its truths
scrambled, blankets and feathers, the start of the day
already in flux-- drifts like a poor little boat
between it's horizons of order and of sleep.

Objects want only to drag themselves along:
vestiges, entropic followers, cold legacies.
Papers hide their shriveled vowels;
the wine in the bottle prefers to continue yesterday.

But you--The One Who Puts Things In Order--you shimmer
through like a bee, probing spaces lost to the darkness:
conquering light, you with your white energy.

So you construct a new clarity here,
and objects obey, following the wind of life:
an Order establishes its bread, its dove.


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pearly
Knowflake

Posts: 554
From: Neptune, Milky Way, Universe
Registered: Jun 2002

posted May 14, 2003 12:28 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for pearly     Edit/Delete Message
Oop, Juniperb just saw your post! I am just having a bit of fun here, just got inspired to post. These are great poems to read while in "lust"... you know, totally caught up... although admittedly, I am cuurently in want of such inspiration... but, I have vague memories of that emotion which Neruda helps bring back...

So about you, aww... not in love with love?? I know the feeling... I'm still working on that divine wisdom of Pallas for you Things can get pretty stone serious in the daily grind... and you know, that's just what life can do sometimes, grind you down. Personally, I have really been going through it lately and I feel like I'm surrounded by so much that isn't "me". Sometimes I just want to be "freer" than I am, and I sit back and think "well, what's "holding on" to me?" In reality it is nothing, yet once you are wrapped up in a tangled web, I've found it's hard to figure a way out... hmmm. Anyway, I am just vocalizing or, um, typing out my own miseries ... don't mind me... just wanted to say I feel you and totally understand not being in love with love...

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pearly
Knowflake

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From: Neptune, Milky Way, Universe
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posted May 14, 2003 12:45 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for pearly     Edit/Delete Message
Here is the dedication Pablo Neruda wrote to his wife:


TO MATILDE URRUTIA

My beloved wife, I suffered while I was writing these misnamed "sonnets"; they hurt me and caused me grief, but the happiness I feel in offering them to you is vast as a savannah. When I set this task for myself, I knew very well that down the right sides of sonnets, with elegant discriminating taste, poets of all times have arranged rhymes that sound like silver, or crystal, or cannonfire. But--with great humility--I made these sonnets out of wood; I gave them the sound of that opaque pure substance, and that is how they should reach your ears. Walking in forests or on beaches, along hidden lakes, in latitudes sprinkled with ashes, you and I have picked up pieces of pure bark, pieces of wood subject to the comings and goings of water and the weather. Out of such softened relics, then, with hatchet and machete and pocketknife, I built up these lumber piles of love, and with fourteen boards each I built little houses, so that your eyes, which I adore and sing to, might live in them. Now that I have declared the foundations of my love, I surrender this century to you: wooden sonnets that rise only because you gave them life.

October 1959

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juniperb
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posted May 14, 2003 07:52 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for juniperb     Edit/Delete Message
Thanks Pearly, he does pluck at the heart strings

I spent so many years being in-love-with-love (typical Aqua ) that it took a good dose of reality to see love, warts and all, and grow with it. Tho, a part of me miss`s the ' haunting hunger', I find peace in the day to day grind of the spiritual and physical realities of love in this dimension. I`ve personally come to believe that the wispy,pristine, haunting need for the elusive love poets speak, is re-membrance of pure total love as when we were in pure spirit. Sadly, many miss the love boat chasing memories and perhaps missing the lesson.

Ok, I`m digressing here. Thanks again for sharing; don`t know how I missed such beautiful works!

juniperb

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pearly
Knowflake

Posts: 554
From: Neptune, Milky Way, Universe
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posted May 16, 2003 03:23 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for pearly     Edit/Delete Message
Hi Juniperb

Yes, I tend to agree with you that poets are tapping a long ago memory of pure love, the source... has to be. Also, the haunting love or unrequited love that a person aches for is probably also a "memory" of that original bliss.

You are right about growing into the physical realm of love and being comfortable with the daily reality of long term commitment... it definitely can be comforting, a different sort of love vibe, and of course that is the arena in which we learn alot of our life lessons and work out various karma... so it is a good place to be Enlightenment is good

I like that place alright, yet I usually tend to vacillate in relationships. My current of 8 years has periods such as you describe, and then I just can't do it... I need to flee or something, it gets too "grounded". He is Taurus with a Virgo Moon... can we say Earth? I don't know... we'll see... but somehow I always feel like I need something more magical and less structured... has to be that Pisces Sun, Mercury and Venus in me! Oh well...

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Randall
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posted May 17, 2003 07:59 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Randall     Edit/Delete Message

------------------
"Never mentally imagine for another that which you would not want to experience for yourself, since the mental image you send out inevitably comes back to you." Rebecca Clark

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pearly
Knowflake

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From: Neptune, Milky Way, Universe
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posted May 17, 2003 05:14 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for pearly     Edit/Delete Message
Do you know what is crazy? I just re-read this string and realized I reponded to Proxie and put "Juniperb".... sorry if I just confused you Juniperb, I can imagine that it all may have felt out of context to you .... although I'm glad to have chatted with you anyway!

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juniperb
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posted May 17, 2003 05:44 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for juniperb     Edit/Delete Message
Pearly, I just thought you could read my mind!!! And hey, we learned some enlightening thoughts about each other. Thats what it`s all about

juniperb

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