Translated by William O'Daly

III.


Tell me, is the rose naked
or is that her only dress?

Why do trees conceal
the splendor of their roots?

Who hears the regrets
of the thieving automobile?

Is there anything in the world sadder
than a train standing in the rain?




Reprinted from The Book of Questions by permission of Copper Canyon Press, written by Pablo Neruda, and translated by William O'Daly. Copyright © 2001 by William O'Daly. All rights reserved.

Translated by Donald D. Walsh

Furrowed motherland, I swear that in your ashes
you will be born like a flower of eternal water
I swear that from your mouth of thirst will come to the air
the petals of bread, the spilt
inaugurated flower. Cursed,
cursed, cursed be those who with an ax and serpent
came to your earthly arena, cursed those
who waited for this day to open the door
of the dwelling to the moor and the bandit:
What have you achieved? Bring, bring the lamp,
see the soaked earth, see the blackened little bone
eaten by the flames, the garment
of murdered Spain.



"Curse" by Pablo Neruda, from Spain In Our Hearts, copyright © 1973 by Pablo Neruda, and Donald D. Walsh. Copyright © 2006 New Directions Publishing Corp.

Translated by W. S. Merwin

The memory of you emerges from the night around me.

The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.



Deserted like the wharves at dawn.

It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one!



Cold flower heads are raining over my heart.

Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked.



In you the wars and the flights accumulated.

From you the wings of the song birds rose.



You swallowed everything, like distance.

Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank!



It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss.

The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse.



Pilot’s dread, fury of a blind diver,

turbulent drunkenness of love, in you everything sank!



In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded.

Lost discoverer, in you everything sank!



You girdled sorrow, you clung to desire,

sadness stunned you, in you everything sank!



I made the wall of shadow draw back,

beyond desire and act, I walked on.



Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost,

I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you.



Like a jar you housed the infinite tenderness,

and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar.



There was the black solitude of the islands,

and there, woman of love, your arms took me in.



There were thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit.

There were grief and the ruins, and you were the miracle.



Ah woman, I do not know how you could contain me

in the earth of your soul, in the cross of your arms!



How terrible and brief was my desire of you!

How difficult and drunken, how tensed and avid.



Cemetery of kisses, there is still fire in your tombs,

still the fruited boughs burn, pecked at by birds.



Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs,

oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bodies.



Oh the mad coupling of hope and force

in which we merged and despaired.



And the tenderness, light as water and as flour.

And the word scarcely begun on the lips.



This was my destiny and in it was the voyage of my longing,

and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank!



Oh pit of debris, everything fell into you,

what sorrow did you not express, in what sorrow are you not drowned!



From billow to billow you still called and sang.

Standing like a sailor in the prow of a vessel.



You still flowered in songs, you still broke in currents.

Oh pit of debris, open and bitter well.



Pale blind diver, luckless slinger,

lost discoverer, in you everything sank!



It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour

which the night fastens to all the timetables.



The rustling belt of the sea girdles the shore.

Cold stars heave up, black birds migrate.



Deserted like the wharves at dawn.

Only the tremulous shadow twists in my hands.



Oh farther than everything. Oh farther than everything.



It is the hour of departure. Oh abandoned one.





From Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, by Pablo Neruda, translated by W.S. Merwin, published by Chronicle Books. Copyright © 1969 by W.S. Merwin. Reprinted by permission of W.S. Merwin. All rights reserved.

Translated by Robert Bly

There are cemeteries that are lonely,
graves full of bones that do not make a sound,
the heart moving through a tunnel,
in it darkness, darkness, darkness,
like a shipwreck we die going into ourselves,
as though we were drowning inside our hearts,
as though we lived falling out of the skin into the soul.

And there are corpses,
feet made of cold and sticky clay,
death is inside the bones,
like a barking where there are no dogs,
coming out from bells somewhere, from graves somewhere,
growing in the damp air like tears of rain.

Sometimes I see alone
coffins under sail,
embarking with the pale dead, with women that have dead hair,
with bakers who are as white as angels,
and pensive young girls married to notary publics,
caskets sailing up the vertical river of the dead,
the river of dark purple,
moving upstream with sails filled out by the sound of death,
filled by the sound of death which is silence.

Death arrives among all that sound
like a shoe with no foot in it, like a suit with no man in it,
comes and knocks, using a ring with no stone in it, with no
finger in it,
comes and shouts with no mouth, with no tongue, with no
throat.
Nevertheless its steps can be heard
and its clothing makes a hushed sound, like a tree.

I'm not sure, I understand only a little, I can hardly see,
but it seems to me that its singing has the color of damp violets,
of violets that are at home in the earth,
because the face of death is green,
and the look death gives is green,
with the penetrating dampness of a violet leaf
and the somber color of embittered winter.

But death also goes through the world dressed as a broom,
lapping the floor, looking for dead bodies,
death is inside the broom,
the broom is the tongue of death looking for corpses,
it is the needle of death looking for thread.

Death is inside the folding cots:
it spends its life sleeping on the slow mattresses,
in the black blankets, and suddenly breathes out:
it blows out a mournful sound that swells the sheets,
and the beds go sailing toward a port
where death is waiting, dressed like an admiral.




By Pablo Neruda, translated and edited by Robert Bly, and published by Beacon Press in Neruda & Vallejo: Selected Poems. © 1993 by Robert Bly. Used with permission. All rights reserved.

Translated by Clark Zlotchew and Dennis Maloney

In these lonely regions I have been powerful

in the same way as a cheerful tool

or like untrammeled grass which lets loose its seed

or like a dog rolling around in the dew.

Matilde, time will pass wearing out and burning

another skin, other fingernails, other eyes, and then

the algae that lashed our wild rocks,

the waves that unceasingly construct their own whiteness,

all will be firm without us,

all will be ready for the new days,

which will not know our destiny.



What do we leave here but the lost cry

of the seabird, in the sand of winter, in the gusts of wind

that cut our faces and kept us

erect in the light of purity,

as in the heart of an illustrious star?



What do we leave, living like a nest

of surly birds, alive, among the thickets

or static, perched on the frigid cliffs?

So then, if living was nothing more than anticipating

the earth, this soil and its harshness,

deliver me, my love, from not doing my duty, and help me

return to my place beneath the hungry earth.



We asked the ocean for its rose,

its open star, its bitter contact,

and to the overburdened, to the fellow human being, to the wounded

we gave the freedom gathered in the wind.

It's late now. Perhaps

it was only a long day the color of honey and blue,

perhaps only a night, like the eyelid

of a grave look that encompassed

the measure of the sea that surrounded us,

and in this territory we found only a kiss,

only ungraspable love that will remain here

wandering among the sea foam and roots.





From The House in the Sand by Pablo Neruda. Copyright © 1966, 2004 by Fundacion Pablo Neruda. Translation copyright © 1990, 2004 by Dennis Maloney and Clark Zlotchew. Reprinted by permission of White Pine Press. All rights reserved.