Sublime Blue: Selected Early Odes by Pablo Neruda (2 page)

Peasants and fishermen [in Chile] have forgotten the names of the small plants long ago, and the small flowers have no names now…. To be a hero in undiscovered territories is to be obscure; these territories and their songs are lit only by the most anonymous blood and by flowers whose name nobody knows. Among these flowers there is one that has invaded my whole house. It's a blue flower with a long, proud, lustrous, and tough stem. At its tip, swarms of tiny infra-blue, ultra-blue flowers sway. I don't know if all human beings have the gift of seeing the sub-limest blue. Is it revealed to a select few? Does it remain hidden, invisible to others? Has some blue god denied them its contemplation? Or is it only my own joy, nursed by solitude and converted into pride, gloating because it has found this blue, this blue wave, this blue star in riotous spring?

Finally, his “Ode To The Popular Poets” is yet another exploration of how the natural poet—untutored in books but instructed by the history of the vulnerable heart—can prevail upon the most painful circumstances to manifest that universal vigor “repeated in the song.” Referring to certain of his fellow artists, Leonardo in his notebooks once complained of the growing tendency among aspiring artists to school themselves at the feet of their predecessors rather than in the academy of nature. He singled out as an exception Giotto, praising him for having begun his artistic career as a common shepherd sketching the objects he observed with charred sticks upon flat stones.

On the other hand, Neruda notes, “It's obvious that the poet's occupation is abused to some extent. So many new men and women poets keep cropping up that soon we'll all look like poets, and readers will disappear.” The myth of the “mute, inglorious Milton” can become a conceit harboring disdain for discipline and self-discipline, as in the Elvis Presley movie “Wild In The Country,” popular some decades back. For Neruda and his countrymen, the rigors of the Chilean peasants' daily lives did not include such self-aggrandizing attitudes. That life was—and is— hard, basic, perilous, joyous. Songs providing stays against despair inevitably raise the spirits of an audience. This is done not by standing outside the common lot but by sharing and reshaping it from within, much as early blues musicians, and occasional rare individuals such as Woody Guthrie, have done earlier for us in the 20th century and as indigenous musicians globally are doing for us now in this new cyber-century. Speaking of “the other family of poets” (those not nurtured by an aristocracy), Neruda fondly lists “the militant wanderers of poetry, bar lions, fascinating madmen, tormented sleepwalkers. And let's not overlook those writers tied down, like the galley slave to his oar, to the little stools in government offices.”

Speaking of an earlier vatic function of poetry—”from it came liturgy, the psalms, and also the contents of religions”—, Neruda suggests an interesting transition from the function of poet as witness of nature to poet as witness of human nature:

The poet confronted nature's phenomena and in the early ages called himself a priest, to safeguard his vocation. In the same way, to defend his poetry, the poet of the modern age accepts the investiture earned in the street, among the masses. Today's social poet is still a member of the earliest order of priests. In the old days he made his pact with the darkness, and now he must interpret the light.

Implicit in the scope and textures of Neruda's work is the challenge of a model which poets anywhere in any time, even American poets in our time, might usefully reconsider:

The bourgeoise [Neruda warns his fellow poets] demands a poetry that is more and more isolated from reality. The poet who knows how to call a spade a spade is dangerous to a capitalism on its last legs. It is more convenient for the poet to believe himself a “small god,” as Vicente Huidobro said … [so that] the poet basks in his own divine isolation, and there is no need to bribe or crush him. He has bribed himself by condemning himself to his heaven.

A complete poet is a complete human being—not a specialist, a technician comprehensible chiefly to fellow technicians—who works as the universe itself works, building out of elemental materials those increasingly profound structures in which may live and breathe the astonishing and mysterious varieties of the human spirit.

The model and spirit of the model are apparent and pervasive among the
Odas elementales,
where effortlessly high spirits keep close company even with grave matters.

For invaluable help in rendering these poems from Spanish, I wish to acknowledge my thanks to Junardi Armstrong of Oracle, Arizona, who went through my earliest versions of most of these poems with me years ago; to Professors Lois Welch and David Loughran of the University of Montana, who kindly offered further corrections of some of the later drafts; and to my daughter, Jennifer Lorca Root, who first helped me draft “Ode To The Blue Flower.” I also wish to thank Teresa Acevedo and Juanita Melendez for help with “Ode to Poverty.” And I wish especially to thank both Maria Luisa R. Lacabe of Seattle and Hedy Hebra of the Western Michigan University, who encouraged me and painstakingly annotated my versions of most of these poems with countless invaluable suggestions and corrections. Thanks also to Dave Oliphant of Austin for his invaluable last-minute suggestions, to Melissa Pritchard, who so generously and often has harbored us in the sanctuary of her Phoenix home as Pam has been courageously resurrecting herself from the ashes of her cancer. And of course, and as always, I thank my wife, the poet Pamela Uschuk, for her many helpful readings and suggestions.

I once wrote a short piece positing that “translating poetry is like trying to carry a wave in a bucket.” Certainly these poems often do refer us to the sea, for a sense of what is most vital, dauntless, vast, finally reassuring. Perhaps it is apt that I first undertook to translate them in the Sonoran desert, ghost of a vast prehistoric sea. Whitman wrote of believing sea waves could be a poet's most apt mentors. Translators, perhaps, more often settle for the modest model inherent in Robert Creeley's “Be wet/with a decent happiness.”

All grace notes are due to my helping hands, including, I suspect, those of
el maestro
from time to time. All errors and infelicities, as well as any demonstrations of how original wine can be converted into tap water, are entirely my own.

William Pitt Root
Oracle, Oklahoma City, Port Townsend, Missoula,
Gig Harbor, Tucson/American Airlines/Manhattan,
Winston-Salem, Knoxville, Durango

*
The
Memoirs
referred to throughout the introduction are Hardie St. Martin's translations of Neruda.

Yo me río,

me sonrío

de los viejos poetas,

yo adoro toda

la poesía escrita,

todo el rocío,

luna, diamante, gota

de plata sumergida,

que fue mi antiguo hermano,

agregando a la rosa,

pero

me sonrío

siempre dicen “yo”

a cada paso

les sucede algo,

es siempre “yo”,

por las calles

sólo ellos andan

o la, dulce que aman,

nadie más,

no pasan pescadores,

ni libreros,

no pasan albañiles,

nadie se cae

de un andamio,

nadie sufre,

nadie ama,

sólo mi pobre hermano,

el poeta,

a él le pasan

todas las cosas

ya su dulce querida,

nadie vive

I laugh

and I smile

when it comes to the old poets,

I adore all

the poetry they wrote,

all the dewmoon-

diamond-drops

of sunken silver

my older brother gathered

to improve upon the rose,

yet

I smile,

for always they say “I,”

every time

something happens,

always they say “I,”

through the streets

it is only they who walk

they or the one they love,

no one else is ever around,

no fishermen pass,

no booksellers,

bricklayers never pass,

no one tumbles

from a scaffold,

no one suffers,

no one's in love,

only my poor brother,

the poet,

all things happen

to him

or to his sweet mistress,

no one else even exists,

sino él solo,

nadie llora de hambre

o de ira,

nadie sufre en sus versos

porque no puede

pagar el alquiler,

a nadie en poesía

echan a la calle

con camas y con sillas

y en las fábricas

tampoco pasa nada,

no pasa nada,

se hacen paraguas, copas,

armas, locomotoras,

se extraen minerales

rascando el infierno,

hay huelga,

vienen soldados,

disparan,

disparan contra el pueblo,

es decir,

contra la poesía,

y mi hermano

el poeta

estaba enamorado, o sufría

porque sus sentimientos

son marinos,

ama los puertos

remotos, por sus nombres,

y escribe sobre océanos

que no conoce,

junto a la vida, repleta

como el maíz de granos,

él pasa sin saber

desgranarla,

él sube y baja

sin tocar la tierra,

just him and him alone,

no one cries out in hunger

or wrath,

in his verses no one suffers

unable

make the rent,

never in his poetry

is anyone thrown out into the street

along with the bed and chairs

and in the factories

nothing happens,

not a thing,

umbrellas are made, wine glasses,

weapons, locomotives,

scraping out that hell

they extract minerals,

there's a labor strike,

soldiers come,

they shoot,

they fire against the people,

that is to say

against poetry,

and my brother

the poet

is in love, or suffers

because of his passion

for the sea,

he loves exotic ports

for their names,

he writes of oceans

he doesn't know,

he passes right alongside of life

without knowing enough

to harvest its plenty bulging

like kernels from an ear of corn,

he falls and rises

without ever touching earth,

o a veces

se siente profundísimo

y tenebroso,

él es tan grande

que no cabe en sí mismo,

se enreda y desenreda,

se declara maldito,

lleva con gran dificultad la cruz

de las tinieblas,

piensa que es diferente

a todo el mundo,

todos los días come pan

pero no ha visto nunca

un panadero

ni ha entrado a un sindicato

de panificadores,

y así mi pobre hermano

se hace oscuro,

se tuerce y se retuerce

y se halla

interesante,

interesante,

ésta es la palabra,

yo no soy superior

a mi hermano

pero sonrío,

porque voy por las calles

y sólo yo no existo,

la vida corre

como todos los ríos,

yo soy el único

invisible,

no hay misteriosas sombras,

no hay tinieblas,

todo el mundo me habla,

me quieren contar cosas,

me hablan de sus parientes,

or sometimes

he feels profoundly sad,

a melancholy

so great

his mere body can no longer contain him

so he is entangled and untangled,

declares himself cursed,

with great difficulty carries the cross

of shadows,

he believes himself unique

in all the world,

every day he eats bread