April 11, 2011

21 Days/21 Poems: A Poem You Sent to Someone

Tu Risa


Quítame el pan, si quieres,
quítame el aire, pero
no me quites tu risa

No me quites la rosa,
la lanzaque desgranas,
el agua que de pronto
estalla en tu alegría,
la repentina ola
de plata que te nace.

Mi lucha es dura y vuelvo
con los ojos cansados
a veces de haber visto
la tierra que no cambia,
pero al entrar tu risa
sube al cielo buscándome
y abre para mí todas
las puertas de la vida.

Amor mío, en la hora
más oscura desgrana
tu risa, y si de pronto
ves que mi sangre mancha
las piedras de la calle,
ríe, porque tu risa
sera para mis manos
como una espada fresca.

Junto al mar en otoño,
tu risa debe alzar
su cascada de espuma,
y en primavera, amor,
quiero tu risa como
la flor que yo esperaba,
la flor azul, la rosa
de mi patria sonora.

Ríete de la noche,
del día, de la luna,
ríete de las calles
torcidas de la isla,
ríete de este torpe
muchacho que te quiere,
pero cuando yo abro
los ojos y los cierro,
cuando mis pasos van,
cuando vuelven mis pasos,
niégame el pan, el aire,
la luz, la primavera,
pero tu risa nunca
porque me moriría.

"Tu Risa" by Pablo Neruda. Cien Sonetos de Amor [Translated by Stephen Tapscott] University of Texas Press,  1986.


My exile had just begun in Miami. I was twenty-one an in love with a girl from Colombia. Pablo Neruda, the Chilean poet, was my only hope of speaking to her:

Mi lucha es dura y vuelvo
con los ojos cansados
aveces de haber visto
la tierra que no cambia,
pero al entrar tu risa
sube al cielo buscándome
y abre para mí todas
las puertas de la vida.




Neruda was to become my constant companion for the next thirty years, not only because of his startling verse with its rugged physicality matched by the sheer abandon of his associations, but his willingness to express his love for Matilde openly, Neruda’s verse is filled with phrases such as “quiero tu risa como/ la flor que yo esperaba,” which he uses without any fear of sounding mawkishly sentimental, and which are testaments to his deep abiding love for Matilde;

Plena mujer, manzana carnal, luna caliente, 
espeso aroma de algas, lodo y luz machacados, 
qué oscura claridad se abre entre tus columnas? 




Pablo Neruda (July 12, 1904 – September 23, 1973) was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean poet and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. He chose his pen name after Czech poet Jan Neruda.

Neruda wrote in a variety of styles such as erotically charged love poems as in his collection Twenty Poems of Love and a Song of Despair, surrealist poems, historical epics, and overtly political manifestos. In 1971 Neruda won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez once called him "the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language.” Neruda always wrote in green ink as it was the color of hope.

On July 15, 1945, at Pacaembu Stadium in São Paulo, Brazil, he read to 100,000 people in honor of Communist revolutionary leader Luís Carlos Prestes.[2] During his lifetime, Neruda occupied many diplomatic posts and served a stint as a senator for the Chilean Communist Party. When Conservative Chilean President González Videla outlawed communism in Chile in 1948, a warrant was issued for Neruda's arrest. Friends hid him for months in a house basement in the Chilean port of Valparaíso. Later, Neruda escaped into exile through a mountain pass near Maihue Lake into Argentina. Years later, Neruda was a close collaborator to socialist President Salvador Allende. When Neruda returned to Chile after his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Allende invited him to read at the EstadioNacional before 70,000 people.

Neruda was hospitalized with cancer at the time of the Chilean coup d'état led by Augusto Pinochet. Three days after being hospitalized, Neruda died of heart failure. Already a legend in life, Neruda's death reverberated around the world. Pinochet had denied permission to transform Neruda's funeral into a public event. However, thousands of grieving Chileans disobeyed the curfew and crowded the streets

Source: Wikipedia

***


2 comments:

marc said...

in america, it is impossible to imagine any poet being so beloved, so dangerous, and so respected - so, i suppose, heroic would be the word -

any writer for that matter

in his poems he had the erotic of the individual but scope for history as well

green ink -very good

Geoffrey Philp said...

Yes, Marc...and that is why i love his work so much...a dangerous poet

1Love,
Geoffrey