from
Odas Elementales
1954–1957
Me trajo Maru Mori
un par
de calcetines
que tejió con sus manos
de pastora,
dos calcetines suaves
como liebres.
En ellos
metí los pies
como en
dos
estuches
tejidos
con hebras del
crepúsculo
y pellejo de ovejas.
Violentos calcetines,
mis pies fueron
dos pescados
de lana,
dos largos tiburones
de azul ultramarino
atravesados
por una trenza de oro,
dos gigantescos mirlos,
dos cañones:
mis pies
fueron honrados
de este modo
por
estos
celestiales
calcetines.
Eran
tan hermosos
que por primera vez
mis pies me parecieron
inaceptables
come dos decrépitos
bomberos, bomberos,
indignos
de aquel fuego
bordado,
de aquellos luminosos
calcetines.
Sin embargo
resistí
la tentación aguda
de guardarlos
como los colegiales
preservan
las luciérnagas,
como los eruditos
coleccionan
documentos sagrados,
resistí
el impulso furioso
de ponerlos
en una jaula
de oro
y darles cada día
alpiste
y pulpa de melón rosado.
Como descubridores
que en la selva
entregan el rarísimo
venado verde
al asador
y se lo comen
con remordimiento,
estiré
los pies
y me enfundé
los
bellos
calcetines
y
luego los zapatos.
Y es ésta
la moral de mi oda:
dos veces es belleza
la belleza
y lo que es bueno es doblemente
bueno
cuando se trata de dos calcetines
de lana
en el invierno.
Maru Mori brought me
a pair
of socks
which she knitted herself
with her sheepherder’s hands,
two socks as soft
as rabbits.
I slipped my feet
into them
as though into
two
cases
knitted
with threads of
twilight
and goatskin.
Violent socks,
my feet were
two fish made
of wool,
two long sharks
sea-blue, shot
through
by one golden thread,
two immense blackbirds,
two cannons:
my feet
were honored
in this way
by
these
heavenly
socks.
They were
so handsome
for the first time
my feet seemed to me
unacceptable
like two decrepit
firemen, firemen
unworthy
of that woven
fire,
of those glowing
socks.
Nevertheless
I resisted
the sharp temptation
to save them somewhere
as schoolboys
keep
fireflies,
as learned men
collect
sacred texts,
I resisted
the mad impulse
to put them
into a golden
cage
and each day give them
birdseed
and pieces of pink melon.
Like explorers
in the jungle who hand
over the very rare
green deer
to the spit
and eat it
with remorse,
I stretched out
my feet
and pulled on
the magnificent
socks
and then my shoes.
The moral
of my ode is this:
beauty is twice
beauty
and what is good is doubly
good
when it is a matter of two socks
made of wool
in winter.
Translated by Robert Bly
El árbol del verano
intenso,
invulnerable,
es todo cielo azul,
sol amarillo,
cansancio a goterones,
es una espada
sobre los caminos,
un zapato quemado
en las ciudades:
la claridad, el mundo
nos agobian,
nos pegan
en los ojos
con polvareda,
con súbitos golpes de oro,
nos acosan
los pies
con espinitas,
con piedras calurosas,
y la boca
sufre
más que todos los dedos:
tienen sed
la garganta,
la dentadura,
los labios y la lengua:
queremos
beber las cataratas,
la noche azul,
el polo,
y entonces
cruza el cielo
el más fresco de todos
los planetas,
la redonda, suprema
y celestial sandía.
Es la fruta del árbol de la sed.
Es la ballena verde del verano.
El universo seco
de pronto
tachonado
por este firmamento de frescura
deja caer
la fruta
rebosante:
se abren sus hemisferios
mostrando una bandera
verde, blanca, escarlata,
que se disuelve
en cascada, en azúcar,
en delicia!
Cofre del agua, plácida
reina
de la frutería,
bodega
de la profundidad, luna
terrestre!
Oh pura,
en tu abundancia
se deshacen rubíes
y uno
quisiera
morderte
hundiendo
en ti
la cara,
el pelo,
el alma!
Te divisamos
en la sed
como
mina o montaña
de espléndido alimento,
pero
te conviertes
entre la dentadura y el deseo
en sólo
fresca luz
que se deslíe
en manantial
que nos tocó
cantando.
Y así
no pesas
en la siesta
abrasadora,
no pesas,
sólo
pasas
y tu gran corazón de brasa fría
se convirtió en el agua
de una gota.
The tree of intense
summer,
hard,
is all blue sky,
yellow sun,
fatigue in drops,
a sword
above the highways,
a scorched shoe
in the cities:
the brightness and the world
weigh us down,
hit us
in the eyes
with clouds of dust,
with sudden golden blows,
they torture
our feet
with tiny thorns,
with hot stones,
and the mouth
suffers
more than all the toes:
the throat
becomes thirsty,
the teeth,
the lips, the tongue:
we want to drink
waterfalls,
the dark blue night,
the South Pole,
and then
the coolest of all
the planets crosses
the sky,
the round, magnificent,
star-filled watermelon.
It’s a fruit from the thirst-tree.
It’s the green whale of the summer.
The dry universe
all at once
given dark stars
by this firmament of coolness
lets the swelling
fruit
come down:
its hemispheres open
showing a flag
green, white, red,
that dissolves into
wild rivers, sugar,
delight!
Jewel box of water, phlegmatic
queen
of the fruitshops,
warehouse
of profundity, moon
on earth!
You are pure,
rubies fall apart
in your abundance,
and we
want
to bite into you,
to bury our
face
in you, and
our hair, and
the soul!
When we’re thirsty
we glimpse you
like
a mine or a mountain
of fantastic food,
but
among our longings and our teeth
you change
simply
into cool light
that slips in turn into
spring water
that touched us once
singing.
And that is why
you don’t weigh us down
in the siesta hour
that’s like an oven,
you don’t weigh us down,
you just
go by
and your heart, some cold ember,
turned itself into a single
drop of water.
Translated by Robert Bly
Esta sal
del salero
yo la ví en los salares.
Sé que
no
van a creerme,
pero
canta,
canta la sal, la piel
de los salares,
canta
con una boca ahogada
por la tierra.
Me estremecí en aquellas
soledades
cuando escuché
la voz
de
la sal
en el desierto.
Cerca de Antofagasta
toda
la pampa salitrosa
suena:
es una
voz
quebrada,
un lastimero
canto.
Luego en sus cavidades
la sal gema, montaña
de una luz enterrada,
catedral transparente,
cristal del mar, olvido
de las olas.
Y luego en cada mesa
de este mundo,
sal,
tu substancia
ágil
espolvoreando
la luz vital
sobre
los alimentos.
Preservadora
de las antiguas
bodegas del navío,
descubridora
fuiste
en el océano,
materia
adelantada
en los desconocidos, entreabiertos
senderos de la espuma.
Polvo del mar, la lengua
de ti recibe un beso
de la noche marina:
el gusto funde en cada
sazonado manjar tu oceanía
y así la mínima,
la minúscula
ola del salero
nos enseña
no sólo su doméstica blancura,
sino el sabor central del infinito.
I saw the salt
in this shaker
in the salt flats.
I know
you
will never believe me,
but
it sings,
the salt sings, the hide
of the salt plains,
it sings
through a mouth smothered
by earth.
I shuddered in those deep
solitudes
when I heard
the voice
of
the salt
in the desert.
Near Antofagasta
the entire
salt plain
speaks:
it is a
broken
voice,
a song full
of grief.
Then in its own mines
rock salt, a mountain
of buried light,
a cathedral through which light passes,
crystal of the sea, abandoned
by the waves.
And then on every table
on this earth,
salt,
your nimble
body
pouring out
the vigorous light
over
our foods.
Preserver
of the stores
of the ancient ships,
you were
an explorer
in the ocean,
substance
going first
over the unknown, barely open
routes of the sea-foam.
Dust of the sea, the tongue
receives a kiss
of the night sea from you:
taste recognizes
the ocean in each salted morsel,
and therefore the smallest,
the tiniest
wave of the shaker
brings home to us
not only your domestic whiteness
but the inward flavor of the infinite.
Translated by Robert Bly
(An interview with Pablo Neruda by Robert Bly)
A great river of images has flowed into your poetry, as well as into the poetry of Lorca, Aleixandre, Vallejo, and Hernández—an outpouring of poetry from the very roots of poetry. Why has the greatest poetry in the twentieth century appeared in the Spanish language?
I must tell you it is very nice to hear such a thing from an American poet. Of course we believe in enthusiasm too, but still we are all modest workers—we must not make too many comparisons. I must tell you two different things about poetry in Spanish. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Spanish poetry was great—you had such giants as Góngora, Quevedo, Lope de Vega, and many, many others. Then, for three centuries after that, no poetry—a very, very small poetry. Finally, the generation of Lorca, Alberti, and Aleixandre wrote a large poetry again—they rose up against this small poetry. How, and why? We should remember that this generation of poets is coincident with the political awakening of Spain as a republic, the awakening of a great country that was asleep. Suddenly they had all the energy and strength of a man waking. I told about that in my poem, “How Spain Was,” which I am sure you remember from our reading at the Poetry Center last night. Unfortunately, you see what happened. The Franco revolt. It sent into exile and to death so many of the poets. That happened with Miguel Hernández, Lorca, and Antonio Machado, who was really a classic of the century.
Poetry in South America is a different matter altogether. You see there are in our countries rivers which have no names, trees which nobody knows, and birds which nobody has described. It is easier for us to be surrealistic because everything we know is new. Our duty, then, as we understand it, is to express what is unheard of. Everything has been painted in Europe, everything has been sung in Europe. But not in America. In that sense, Whitman was a great teacher. Because what is Whitman? He was not only intensely conscious, but he was open-eyed! He had tremendous eyes to see everything—he taught us to see things. He was our poet.
Whitman has clearly had much more influence on the Spanish poets than on the North American poets. Why didn’t the North American poets understand him? Was it because of the influence of England?
Perhaps, perhaps the intellectualist influence of England. Also many of the American poets just following Eliot thought that Whitman was too rustic, too primitive. But he is not so simple—Whitman—he’s a complicated man and the best of him is when he is most complicated. He had eyes open to the world and he taught us about poetry and many other things. We have loved him very much. Eliot never had much influence with us. He’s too intellectual perhaps, we are too primitive. And then everyone has to choose a road—a refined and intellectual way, or a more brotherly, general way, trying to embrace the world around you, to discover the new world.
In his essays, Eliot directed attention toward tradition. But the suggestion you made seems to be that really South America has no tradition—America has no tradition—and admitting this lack of tradition has opened up things.
That is an interesting thing. We do have to mention that in some South American poets you can see the trace of very old ways of thought and expression, Indian ways of thought in Vallejo, for instance. César Vallejo has something that comes from very deep in his country, Peru, which is an Indian country. He is a wonderful poet, as you know.
As for a literary tradition, what tradition could we have? The Spanish poetry of the 19th century was a very poor poetry—rhetorical and false—postromantic in the worst way. They never did have a good romantic poet. They had no Shelley, no Goethe. Nothing of the sort. No, no. Rhetorical and empty.
Your poetry presents a vision of affection between people, an affection between man and animals, compassion for plants and snakes, and a certain give and take between man and his unconscious. Most modern poets present a very different vision. How do you feel about that?
Well, I make a distinction between kinds of poetry. I am not a theoretician, but I do see as one kind of poetry the poetry which is written in closed rooms. I’ll give as an example Mallarmé, a very great French poet. I have sometimes seen photographs of his room; they were full of little beautiful objects—“abanicos”—fans. He used to write beautiful poems on fans. But his rooms were stuffy, all full of curtains, no air. He is a great poet of closed rooms and it seems that many of the New World poets follow this tradition: they don’t open the windows and you not only have to open the window but come through the windows and live with rivers and animals and beasts. I would say to young poets of my country and of Latin America—perhaps this is our tradition—to discover things, to be in the sea, to be in the mountains, and approach every living thing. And how can you not love such an approach to life, that has such extravagant surprises?
I live by a very rough sea in Isla Negra—my house is there—and I am never tired of being alone looking at the sea and working there. It is a perpetual discovery for me. I don’t know, maybe I am a foolish 19th century nature lover like your great writer Thoreau, and other contemplative writers. I am not contemplative, but I think that is a great part of a poet’s life.
You have fought many political battles, fighting seriously and steadily like a bear, and yet you have not ended up obsessed with political matters like Tolstoy, or embittered. Your poetry seems to become more and more human, and affectionate. Now how do you explain that?
You see, I come from a country which is very political. Those who fight have great support from the masses. Practically all the writers of Chile are out to the left—there are almost no exceptions. We feel supported and understood by our own people. That gives us great security and the numbers of people who support us are very great. You see the elections in Chile are won by one side or the other by few votes only. As poets we are really in touch with the people, which is very rare. I read my poems everywhere in my country—every village, every town—for years and years, and I feel it is my duty to do it. It is a tiresome thing, but partly from that has come my attachment to politics. I have seen so much the misery of my country. The poverty I see—I cannot get away from that.
Only in recent years have the people in the United States begun to realize what South American literature is. They still know very little about it.
I think the problem here is a matter of translation. We need to have more North American writers translated into Spanish and South American poetry and literature translated into English. The delegation of the P.E.N. Club of Chile have shown me a list of books they have drawn up. The list contains one hundred basic works in South American literature which could be read by all the North American people. They intend to look for support for this project and plan to present it as a motion during the P.E.N. Congress. That is a good idea. I don’t know if the P.E.N. Club can support it, but someone should support the project. The whole problem of translation is a great and serious one. Imagine—that Vallejo’s work has never been published in the United States! Only the twenty poems published by your Sixties Press.
I know you have come to believe that among the many enemies mankind has are gods. I think you said you first felt this in Rangoon. But don’t the gods come from the unconscious of men, just as poems do? In what sense then are they enemies?
In the beginning gods help like poems. Man makes gods who help men. But afterward men overpower gods and then bankruptcy.
I have a good question for you. Do you think you have ever lived before?
I don’t know … I don’t think—I will try to inquire!
Tolstoy said a new consciousness was developing in humanity, like a new organ, and that the governments had set themselves to stop the growth of this new consciousness. Do you think this is true?
In general, you see, governments have never understood anywhere in the world the spirit of writers and poets. That is the general thing which we are going to cure. How? Producing and writing. You poets are doing a wonderful thing in the United States which I have seen from your lectures in public and all that. You are awakening a new thing since you are defending this spirit you are talking about.
César Vallejo, after struggling through or plunging into a long period of surrealism (The Trilce Poems), came out into a very human simplicity in Poemas Humanos. You also passed through a long period of surrealist poetry in Residencia en la Tierra and then came out into the simplicity of Odas Elementales. Isn’t it strange you have both followed the same path?
I love Vallejo. I always admired him, we were brothers. Nevertheless, we were very different. Race especially. He was Peruvian. He was a very Peruvian man and to me Peruvian man is something interesting. We came from different worlds. I have never thought about what you tell me. I like very much the way you approach us—that you bring us near each other in our work worlds. I never thought of it. I like it.
What was Vallejo like when you were in a room with him? Was he excitable, or calm and broody?
Vallejo was usually very serious, very solemn, you see, with great dignity. He had a very high forehead and he was small in stature, and he kept himself very much aloof. But among friends—I don’t know if he was this way with others but he was with us—I have seen him jumping with happiness, jumping. So I knew at least these two sides of him.
People often talk of the “Indian element” which they see in much Latin American poetry and fiction. What is this “Indian element” exactly?
In Vallejo it shows itself as a subtle way of thought, a way of expression that is not direct, but oblique. I don’t have it. I am a Castilian poet. In Chile we defend the Indians and almost all South Americans have some Indian blood, I do too. But I don’t think my work is in any way Indian.
In Residencia your poems dug deeper and deeper into despair, like a man digging into black earth. Then you turned away in another direction, and your poetry moved more and more toward a simplicity. Did this come about partly because the Spanish Civil War made it absolutely clear how much the people needed help?
You say that very well—it is true. You see, when I wrote Residencia One and Two I was living in India. I was twenty-one, twenty-two, and twenty-three years old. I was isolated from the Indian people, whom I didn’t know, and also from the English people whom I didn’t understand, nor did they understand me, and I was in a very lonely situation. I was in an exciting country which I couldn’t penetrate, which I couldn’t understand well. They were lonely days and years for me. In 1934 I was transferred as consul to Madrid. The Civil War did help me and inspire me to live more near the people, to understand more and to be more natural. For the first time I felt that I belonged to a community.
Have your opinions of Rilke and the “Poetas Celestes” (Divine Poets) changed at all since the poem you wrote attacking them?
Yes, I must say I have been mistaken many times in my life. I was dogmatic and foolish. But the trend of my ideas is as it was. Only in my exaggeration I was mistaken, because he is a great poet, just as Kafka is a great writer. Excuse me, but the contradictions—one sees them only when life rolls on, one sees one has been mistaken.
Many people feel that the quality of literary work being done now shows a decline from the work being done thirty years ago? Do you think so?
No, no. I think the creativity is strong. I see so many new forms in poetry now in the young poets I have never seen before. There is no more fear of experience. Before there was a great fear of breaking the mold and now there is no more of this fear. It is wonderful.
How come you don’t have that fear of experience?
It took me a lot of time to have no fear. When I was a young poet I was full of fear like a real rat in a corner. When I was a very young poet I was afraid to break all the laws which were enforced on us by the critics. But now there is no more of this. All the young poets come in and say what they like and do what they like.
In one of your essays you described something that happened to you as a boy which you thought has had a great influence on your poetry. There was a fence in your backyard. Through a hole in it one day a small hand passed through to you a gift—a toy lamb. And you went into the house and came back and handed back through the hole the thing you loved most—a pinecone.
Yes, that boy passed me a lamb, a woolen lamb. It was beautiful.
You said that somehow this helped you to understand that if you give something to humanity you’ll get something else back even more beautiful.
Your memory is wonderful, and this is exactly right. I learned much from that in my childhood. This exchange of gifts—mysterious—settled deep inside me like a sedimentary deposit.
The interview took place
June 12, 1966, in New York.