Sublime Blue: Selected Early Odes by Pablo Neruda (7 page)
Read Sublime Blue: Selected Early Odes by Pablo Neruda Online
Authors: Pablo Neruda
Tengo las manos blancas
de dar pan en las panaderÃas.
Donde vayas,
pobreza,
mi canto
está cantando,
mi vida
está viviendo,
mi sangre
está luchando.
you will find me singing,
under
every hospital sheet
you will run into my song.
I follow you,
Poverty,
I watch you,
I approach,
I open fire,
I isolate you,
I cut your claws,
I tear out the teeth
you have left.
I am
everywhere:
In the ocean with the fishermen,
in the mines
where men
wipe their foreheads,
drying their black sweat,
they encounter
my poems.
I go out everyday
with the textile worker.
I have white hands
from giving out loaves at the bakery.
Where you go,
Poverty,
my song
is being sung,
my life
is being lived,
my blood
is struggling.
Derrotaré
tus pálidas banderas
en donde se levanten.
Otros poetas
antaño te llamaron
santa,
veneraron tu capa,
se alimentaron de humo
y desaparecieron.
Yo te desafÃo,
con duros versos te golpeo el rostro,
te embarco y te destierro.
Yo con otros,
con otros, muchos otros,
te vamos expulsando
de la tierra a la luna
para que allà te quedes
frÃa y encarcelada
mirando con un ojo
el pan y los racimos
que cubrirá la tierra
de mañana.
I trample
your pale flags
wherever they are raised.
Other poets
in times past called you
Saint,
they venerated your cloak,
they fed upon vapors
and they vanished.
I defy you,
with tough verses I batter your face,
I deport you and I exile you.
I with others,
yes others, many others,
we are going to banish you
from earth to the moon
so that there you remain
cold and incarcerated
watching with one eye
the loaves and clusters of fruit
that will cloak the earth
tomorrow.
Vino color de dÃa,
vino color de noche,
vino con pies de púrpura
o sangre de topacio,
vino,
estrellado hijo
de la tierra,
vino, liso
como una espada de oro,
suave
como un desordenado terciopelo,
vino encaracolado
y suspendido,
amoroso,
marino,
nunca has cabido en una copa,
en un canto, en un hombre,
coral, gregario eres,
y cuando menos, mutuo.
A veces
te nutres de recuerdos
mortales,
en tu ola
vamos de tumba en tumba,
picapedrero de sepulcro helado,
y lloramos
lágrimas transitorias,
pero
tu hermoso
traje de primavera
es diferente,
el corazón sube a las ramas,
el viento mueve el dÃa,
nada queda
Wine the color of day,
color of night,
wine with purple feet
or topaz blood,
wine,
star-child
of earth,
wine smooth
as a golden sword,
gentle
as rumpled velvet,
encased in the swirl-shell
of snail,
amorous, marine,
there's never room for you in one cup,
one song, one man;
you are choral, gregarious,
reciprocal, to say the least.
At times
you feed on deadly
memories,
and on your wave
we go from grave to grave,
carver of an icy sepulcher,
and we weep
our transitory tears,
but
your beautiful
spring dress
is quite another matter,
heart rises through the limbs,
wind moves the day,
nothing remains
dentro de tu alma inmóvil.
El vino
mueve la primavera,
crece como una planta la alegrÃa,
caen muros,
peñascos,
se cierran los abismos,
nace el canto.
Oh tú, jarra de vino, en el desierto
con la sabrosa que amo,
dijo el viejo poeta.
Que el cántaro de vino
al beso del amor sume su beso.
Amor mio, de pronto
tu cadera
es la curva colmada
de la copa,
tu pecho es el racimo,
la luz del alcohol tu cabellera,
las uvas tus pezones,
tu ombligo sello puro
estampado en tu vientre de vasija,
y tu amor la cascada
de vino inextinguible,
la claridad que cae en mis sentidos,
el esplendor terrestre de la vida.
Pero no sólo amor,
beso quemante
o corazón quemado
eres, vino de vida,
sino
amistad de los seres, transparencia,
coro de disciplina,
abundancia de flores.
in your stilled soul.
Wine
stirs spring,
swells like vegetal joy,
walls fall back
and great stones,
chasms are sealed
as song is born.
The ancient poet said,
Oh you, jug of wine, in the wilderness,
and I with my sweetheart, my beloved.
Thus does the flowing wine
add to the kiss of love
a kiss of its own.
My love, your hip
suddenly
is the brimming curve
of the wine glass,
your breast is the cluster,
your long tresses luminous with spirits,
your nipples the grapes,
your navel the virgin seal stamped
upon the vessel of your belly,
and your love is the cascade
of inextinguishable wine,
the clarity that illuminates my senses,
the terrestrial splendor of life.
But you are not only love,
the sear of a kiss
or the blazing heart,
more than the wine of life,
for you are also the companionship
of essences, transparency,
the choir of discipline,
the multitudinous flowers.
Amo sobre una mesa,
cuando se habla,
la luz de una botella
de inteligente vino.
Que lo beban,
que recuerden en cada
gota de oro
o copa de topacio
o cuchara de púrpura
que trabajó el otoño
hasta llenar de vino las vasijas
y aprenda el hombre oscuro,
en el ceremonial de su negocio,
a recordar la tierra y sus deberes,
a propagar el cántico del fruto.
I love it when at table,
where we are talking,
the brilliance from a bottle
of vintner's genius flashes forth.
Drink,
and remember in each
drop of gold
or cup of topaz
or spoonful of purple
how autumn worked
to fill the vessels with wine,
and through the rituals of his concerns
let the unsung man learn
how to remember the earth and his obligations,
how to propagate the canticle of the grape.
W
illiam Pitt Root's
numerous poetry collections include
The Storm and Other Poems, Reasons For Pitt Root.
Honors accorded his poetry, which appears in
The Atlantic, New Yorker, The Nation,
and
Poetry,
include grants from the Rockefeller and Guggenheim Foundations, and the National Endowment for the Arts; a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford and a United States/United Kingdom Exchange Artist Fellowship. Root's work, published in twenty languages, has won the Stanley Kunitz Prize and Guy Owen awards, and three Pushcart Prizes.
Root's academic career includes periods at Hunter College-CUNY, the University of Montana, Amherst College, Interlochen Arts Academy, New York University, and Distinguished Visiting Writer residencies at Pacific Lutheran and Wichita State Universities. Most recently he has served as the John C. Hodges visiting writer at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He and his wife, poet Pamela Uschuk, live primarily in the West with a cadre of four-legged companions and enjoy traveling widely to teach and read from their works at home and abroad.
As a child growing up where the Everglades met the Gulf of Mexico, Root often smuggled a radio into his bed nights so he could hear the late night Spanish broadcasts from Havana. “That music came from a part of the universe where people knew how to live their lives far more passionately than anyone I'd ever met. I was mesmerized and heartened by all that energy, all that poetry, as a kid. I still am.”
M
any of these
translations first appeared in slightly different versions in the following periodicals and anthologies:
Anthology and Yearbook of Magazine Verse, Asheville Poetry Review, CutBank, Historical Mathematics Network Journal, International Virtual Institute for Historical Studies of Mathematics, Mississippi Mud, The Proud Word,
and
Telescope.
W
ings Press
was founded in 1975 by Joanie Whitebird and Joseph F. Lomax, both deceased, as “an informal association of artists and cultural mythologists dedicated to the preservation of the literature of the nation of Texas.” Publisher, editor and designer since 1995, Bryce Milligan is honored to carry on and expand that mission to include the finest in American writingâmeaning all of the Americas, without commercial considerations clouding the decision to publish or not to publish.
Wings Press intends to produce multicultural books, chapbooks, ebooks, recordings and broadsides that enlighten the human spirit and enliven the mind. Everyone ever associated with Wings has been or is a writer, and we know well that writing is a transformational art form capable of changing the world, primarily by allowing us to glimpse something of each other's souls. We believe that good writing is innovative, insightful, and interesting. But most of all it is honest.
Likewise, Wings Press is committed to treating the planet itself as a partner. Thus the press uses as much recycled material as possible, from the paper on which the books are printed to the boxes in which they are shipped.
As Robert Dana wrote in
Against the Grain,
“Small press publishing is personal publishing. In essence, it's a matter of personal vision, personal taste and courage, and personal friendships.” Welcome to our world.
Colophon
This first edition of
Sublime Blue: Selected Early Odes of Pablo Neruda,
translated by William Pitt Root, has been printed on 55 pound Edwards Brothers Natural Paper containing a high percentage of recycled fiber. Titles have been set in Colonna MT type, the text in Adobe Caslon type. All Wings Press books are designed and produced by Bryce Milligan.
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