topics: |  poetry | spanish | chile

This is perhaps the world's best-known book of poetry; over a million copies have been sold.

Neruda on Veinte poemas

Neruda writes how these poems, though composed in the city, reflect his childhood memories of Temuco, a small Chilean town near the coast (as is most of Chile). Here he was influenced in writing poetry by school principal Gabriela Mistral, herself to win a Nobel Prize later.

He writes in his Memorias:

    Those Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada_ make
    a painful book of pastoral poems filled with my most tormented
    adolescent passions, mingled with the devastating nature of the
    southern part of my country. It is a book I love because, in spite of
    its acute melancholy, the joyfulness of being alive is present in
    it. A river and its mouth helped me to write it: the Imperial
    River. Veinte poemas is my love affair with Santiago, with its
    student-crowded streets, the university, and the honeysuckle fragrance
    of requited love.

    The Santiago sections were written between Echaurren Street and España
    Avenue, and inside the old building of the Teachers Institute, but the
    landscape is always the waters and the trees of the south.

    The docks in the "Cancion desesperada" ("Song of Despair") are the old
    docks of Carahue and Bajo Imperial: the broken planks and the beams like
    stumps battered by the wide river: the wingbeat of the gulls was heard
    and can still be heard at that river's mouth.

    In the long, slender-bodied, abandoned lifeboat left over from some
    shipwreck, I read the whole of Jean Christophe, and I wrote the "Cancion
    desperada." The sky overhead was the most violent blue I have ever
    seen. I used to write inside the boat, hidden in the earth. I don't think
    I have ever again been so exalted or so profound as during those
    days. Overhead, the impenetrable blue sky. In my hands, Jean Christophe
    or the nascent lines of my poem. Beside me, everything that existed and
    continued always to exist in m y poetry: the distant sound of the sea,
    the cries of the wild birds, and love burning, without consuming itself,
    like an immortal bush.

    I am always being asked who the woman in Veinte poemas is, a difficult
    question to answer. The two women who weave in and out of these
    melancholy and passionate poems correspond, let's say, to Marisol and
    Marisombra: Sea and Sun [mar y sol], Sea and Shadow [mar y
    sombra]. Marisol is love in the enchanted countryside, with
    stars in bold relief at night, and dark eyes like the wet sky of
    Temuco. She appears with all her joyfulness and her lively beauty on
    almost every page, surrounded by the waters of the port and by a
    half-moon over the mountains. Marisombra is the student in
    the city. Gray beret, very gentle eyes, the ever-present honeysuckle
    fragrance of my foot-loose and fancy-free student days, the physical
    peace of the passionate meetings in the city's hideaways.
    	  [ Memoirs p.51-52]

   [Marisol is thought to be Terusa, a lover from Temuco who hailed from a
    prosperous family; she was also a beauty, she had been festival queen
    there.  Marisombra was Albertina, a co-student at Santiago, and they
    were often together at communist barricades ("You were the grey beret
    and the still heart.")]

Excerpts

from Introduction by Cristina Garcia

	Body of a woman, white hills, white thighs,
	you look like a world, lying in surrender.
	My rough peasant's body digs into you
	and makes the son leap from the depth of the earth.
From the opening lines of this stunning collection by the twenty-year old
Pablo Neruda, it is immediately obvious that we are in the hands of a nascent
master, of someone who can lead us, confidently, lyrically, from darkness
into the sweet realm of the senses.

Neruda arrived at the age of sixteen to the capital city of Santiago to study
French literature after a childhood spent largely in Temuco, a densely
forested region in the south of Chile, with his railroad worker father and
his loving step-mother.  vii

Neruda's family, especially his father, was opposed to his writing poems,
preferring that he concentrate on more practical pursuits.  In fact, he
changed his given name, Ricardo Eliecer Neftali Reyes, to Pablo Neruda (after
Czech historical novelist Jan Neruda) in part to avoid his father's
disapproval.

The magical natural world of his childhood :
[/cvr]
	Rapture of the rivers,
	banks of thicket and fragrance,
	sudden boulders, burnt-out trees,
	and land, ample and lonely...
		(from Isla Negra)

These are not abstract poems aimed at idealizing beauty or love, but the
messy, scented perceptions of lived loves - and lusts.  viii

Neruda writes from the nuanced points of view of his tongue and his
fingertips, his nostrils, his eyes, his ears:

	    My words rained over you, stroking you.
	    A long time I have loved the sunned mother-of-pearl of your body.
	    I  go so far as to think you own the universe.
	    I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains, bluebells,
	    dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses.
	    I want
	    to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.
			(from Every Day You Play)

Illustrations by Pablo Picasso

Among Neruda's friends were Garcia Lorca and Pablo Picasso.  This edition
has several of Picasso's illustrations, such as this one:

Contents

      Introduction                               i
I     Body of a Woman                            3
II    The Light Wraps You                        5
III   Ah Vastness of Pines                       9
IV    The Morning Is Full                       11
V     So that You Will Hear Me                  15
VI    I Remember You As You Were                21
VII   Leaning into the Afternoons               23
VIII  White Bee                                 27
IX    Drunk with Pines                          33
X     We Have Lost Even                         35
XI    Almost out of the Sky                     39
XII   Your Breast Is Enough                     43
XIII  I Have Gone Marking                       47
XIV   Every Day You Play                        53
XV    I Like for You to Be Still                57
XVI   In My at Twilight                         61
XVII  Thinking, Tangling Shadows                65
XVIII Here I Love You                           71
XIX   Girl Lithe and Tawny                      75
XX    Tonight I Can Write                       77
      The Song of Despair                       83

(Note: all poems in this book are widely available online.)

I : Body of a Woman

Body of a woman, white hills, white thighs,
you look like a world, lying in surrender
My rough peasant's body digs into you
and makes the son leap from the depth of the earth.

I was alone like a tunnel.  The birds fled from me,
and night swamped me with its crushing invasion.
To survive myself I forged you like a weapon,
like an arrow in my bow, a stone in my sling.

But the hour of vengeance falls, and a love you.
Body of skin, of moss, of eager and firm milk.
Oh the goblets of the breast!  Oh the eyes of absence!
Oh the pink roses of the pubis!  Oh your voice, slow and sad!

Body of my woman, I will persist in your grace.
My thirst, my boundless desire, my shifting road!
Dark River-beds where the eternal thirst flows
and weariness follows, and the infinite ache.

II : The Light Wraps You

	The light wraps you in its mortal flame.
	Abstracted pale mourner, standing that way
	against the old propellers of twilight
	that revolves around you.

	Speechless, my friend,
	alone in the loneliness of this hour of the dead
	and filled with lives of fire,
	and pure heir of the ruined day.

	A bough of fruit falls from the sun on your dark garment.
	The great roots of night
	grow suddenly from your soul,
	and the things that hide in you come out again
	so that a blue and pallid people,
	your newly born, takes nourishment.

	Oh magnificent and fecund and magnetic slave
	of the circle that moves in turn through black and gold:
	rise, lead and possess a creation
	so rich in life that its flowers perish
	and it is full of sadness.

III : Ah Vastness of Pines

Ah vastness of pines, murmur of waves breaking,
slow play of lights, solitary bell,
twilight falling in your eyes, toy doll,
earth-shell, in whom the earth sings!

In you the rivers sing and my soul flees in them
as you desire, and you send it where you will.
Aim my road on your bow of hope
and in a frenzy I will flee my flock of arrows.

On all sides I see your waist of fog,
and your silence hunts down my afflicted hours;
my kisses anchor, and my moist desire nests
in your arms of transparent stone.

Ah your mysterious voice that love tolls and darkens
in the resonant and dying evening!
Thus in the deep hours I have seen, over the fields,
the ears of wheat tolling in the mouth of the wind.

V : So That You Will Hear Me

So that you will hear me
my words
sometimes grow thin
as the tracks of the gulls on the beaches.

Necklace, drunken bell
for your hands as smooth as grapes.

And I watch my words from a long way off.
They are more yours than mine.
They climb on my old suffering ivy.

It climbs the same way on damp walls.
You are to blame for this cruel sport.
They are fleeing from my dark lair.
You fill everything, you fill everything.

Before you they are peopled in the solitude that you occupy,
and they are more used to my sadness than you are.

Now I want them to say what I want to say to you
and to make you hear as I wasn’t you to hear me.

The winds of anguish still hauls on them as usual.
Sometimes hurricanes of dreams still knock them over.
You listen to other voices in my painful voice

Lament of old mouths, blood of old supplications.
Love me, companion.  Don't forsake me.  Follow me.
Follow me, companion, on this wave of anguish.

But my words become stained with your love.
You occupy everything, you occupy everything.

I am making them into an endless necklace
for your white hands, smooth as grapes.

VI : I Remember You As You Were

	I remember you as you were last autumn.
	You were the grey beret and the still heart.
	In your eyes the flames of twilight fought on.
	And the leaves fell on the water of your soul.

	Clasping my arms like a climbing plant
	the leaves garnered your voice, that was slow and at peace.
	Bonfire of awe in which my thirst was burning.
	Sweet blue hyacinth twisted over my soul.

	I feel your eyes traveling, and the autumn is far off:
	grey beret, voice of bird, heart like a house,
	towards which my deep longings migrated
	and my kisses fell, happy as embers.

	Sky from a ship, Field from the hills:
	Your memory is made of light, of smoke, of a still pond!
	Beyond your eyes, farther on, the evenings were blazing.
	Dry autumn leaves revolved in your soul.

VIII : White Bee

White bee, you buzz in my soul, drunk with honey,
and your flight winds in slow spirals of smoke.

I am the one without hope, the word without echoes,
he who lost everything and he who had everything.

Last hawser, in you creaks my last longing.
In my barren land you are the final rose.

Ah you who are silent!

Let your deep eyes close.  There the night flutters.
Ah your body, a frightened statue, naked.

You have deep eyes in which the night flails.
Cool arms of flowers and a lap of rose.

Your breasts seem like white snails.
A butterfly of shadow has come to sleep in your belly.


Ah you who are silent!

Here is the solitude from which you are absent.
It is raining.  The sea wind is hunting stray gulls.

The water walks barefoot in the wet streets.
From that tree the leaves complain as though they were sick.

White bee, even when you are gone you buzz in my soul
You live again in time, slender and silent.

Ah you who are silent!

IX : Drunk With Pines

Drunk with pines and long kisses,
like summer I steer the fast sail of roses,
bent towards the death of the thin day,
stuck into my solid marine madness.

Pale and lashed to my ravenous water,
I cruise in the sour smell of the naked climate,
still dressed in grey and bitter sounds
and a sad crest of abandoned spray.

Hardened by passions, I go mounted on my one wave,
lunar, solar, burning and cold, all at once,
becalmed in the throat of fortunate isles
that are white and sweet as cool hips.

In the moist night my garment of kisses trembles
charged to insanity with electric currents,
heroically dividing into dreams
and intoxicating roses practising on me.

Upstream, in the midst of the outer waves,
your parallel body yields to my arms
like a fish infinitely fastened to my soul,
quick and slow, in the energy under the sky.

X : We Have Lost Even

	We have lost even this twilight.
	No one saw us this evening hand in hand
	while the blue night dropped out of the world.

	I have seen from my window
	the fiesta of sunset in the distant mountain tops.

	Sometimes a piece of sun
	burned like a coin between my hands.

	I remembered you with my soul clenched
	in the sadness of mine that you know.

	Where were you then?
	Who else was there?
	Saying what?
	Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly
	when I have sad and feel you are far away?

	The book fell that is always turned to at twilight
	and my cape rolled like a hurt dog at my feet.

	Always, always you recede through the evenings
	towards where the twilight goes erasing statues.

XIV : Every Day You Play

Every day you play with the light of the universe.
Subtle visitor, you arrive in the flower and the water.
You are more that this white head that I hold tightly
as a cluster of fruit, every day, between my hands.

You are like nobody since I love you.
Let me spread you out among the yellow garlands.
Who writes your name in letters of smoke among the stars of the south?
Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed.

Suddenly the wind howls and bangs my shut window.
The sky is a net crammed with shadowy fish.
Here all the winds will let go sooner or later, all of them.
The rain takes off her clothes.

The birds go by, fleeing.
The wind.  The wind.
I can contend only against the power of men.
The storm whirls dark leaves
and turns loose all the boats that were moored last night to the sky.

You are here.  Oh you do not run away.
You will answer me to the last cry.
Cling to me as though you were frightened.
Even so, at one time a strange shadow ran through your eyes.

Now, now too, little one, you bring me honeysuckle,
and even your breasts smell of it.
While the sad wind goes slaughtering butterflies
I love you, and my happiness bites the plum of your mouth.

How you must have suffered against getting accustomed to me,
my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running.
So many times have we seen the morning star burn, kissing our eyes,
and over our heads the grey light unwind in turning fans.

My words rained over you, stroking you.
A long time I have loved the sunned mother-of-pearl of your body.
I  go so far as to think you own the universe.
I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains, bluebells,
dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses.
I want
to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.

XX : Tonight I Can Write

      [This poem moves me every time I read it.  Even the original Spanish,
	 which I can barely make out, manages to move me with its sound.
	 This version by Merwin is perhaps one of the finest translations of
	 this widely translated poem.]

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.                            Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.

Write, for example, ‘The night is starry                          Escribir, por ejemplo: «La noche está estrellada,
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.’               y tiritan, azules, los astros, a lo lejos».

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.                     El viento de la noche gira en el cielo y canta.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.                            Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.                      Yo la quise, y a veces ella también me quiso.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.               En las noches como ésta la tuve entre mis brazos.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.               La besé tantas veces bajo el cielo infinito.

She loved me, and sometimes I loved her too.                      Ella me quiso, a veces yo también la quería.
How could I not have loved her great still eyes.                  Cómo no haber amado sus grandes ojos fijos.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.                            Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.    Pensar que no la tengo. Sentir que la he perdido.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.        Oír la noche inmensa, más inmensa sin ella.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.          Y el verso cae al alma como al pasto el rocío.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.              Qué importa que mi amor no pudiera guardarla.
The night is starry and she is not with me.                       La noche está estrellada y ella no está conmigo.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing.
              In the distance.                                    Eso es todo. A lo lejos alguien canta. A lo lejos.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.                    Mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.

My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer          Como para acercarla mi mirada la busca.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.                   Mi corazón la busca, y ella no está conmigo.

The same night whitening the same trees.                          La misma noche que hace blanquear los mismos árboles.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.                         Nosotros, los de entonces, ya no somos los mismos.

I no longer love her, that's for certain, but how I loved her.    Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero cuánto la quise.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.             Mi voz buscaba el viento para tocar su oído.

Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.    De otro. Será de otro. Como antes de mis besos.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.                    Su voz, su cuerpo claro. Sus ojos infinitos.

I am no longer in love with her, that's certain, but
              maybe I love her.                                   Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero tal vez la quiero.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.                          Es tan corto el amor, y es tan largo el olvido.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms        Porque en noches como ésta la tuve entre mis brazos,
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.                    Mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.

Though this be the last pain she makes me suffer                  Aunque éste sea el último dolor que ella me causa,
and these the last verses that I write for her.                   y éstos sean los últimos versos que yo le escribo.

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