Forty years ago (11/09/1973), chile’s revolution was brought to a violent close by the intervention of the country’s military, with the support and connivance of local and international capitalist interests. Thousands would die, and many more would be imprisoned, tortured and forced into exile. The radical beauty of chile’s revolution, however incomplete it proved to be, is testified to by its continuing resonance in chile’s and other countries’ histories, until our own present. In celebration of that beauty, there is perhaps no more fitting a voice than that of Neruda, who sung of poetry as revolution and of revolution as poetry.
Oda a la poesia
Pablo Neruda
Cerca de cincuenta años
caminando
contigo, Poesía.
Al principio
me enredabas los pies
y caía de bruces
sobre la tierra oscura
o enterraba los ojos
en la charca
para ver las estrellas.
Más tarde te ceñiste
a mí con los dos brazos de la amante
y subiste
en mi sangre
como una enredadera.
Luego
te convertiste
en copa.
Hermoso
fue
ir derramándote sin consumirte,
ir entregando tu agua inagotable,
ir viendo que una gota
caída sobre un corazón quemado
y desde sus cenizas revivía.
Pero no me bastó tampoco.
Tanto anduve contigo
que te perdí el respeto.
Dejé de verte como
náyade vaporosa
te puse a trabajar de lavandera,
a vender pan en las panaderías,
a hilar con las sencillas tejedoras,
a golpear hierros en la metalurgia.
Y seguiste conmigo
andando por el mundo,
pero tú ya no eras
la florida
estatua de mi infancia.
Hablabas
ahora
con voz férrea.
Tus manos
fueron duras como piedras.
Tu corazón
fue un abundante
manantial de campanas,
elaboraste pan a manos llenas,
me ayudaste a no caer de bruces,
me buscaste
compañía,
no una mujer,
no un hombre,
sino miles, millones.
Juntos, Poesía,
fuimos
al combate, a la huelga,
al desfile, a los puertos,
a la mina,
y me reí cuando saliste
con la frente manchada de carbón
o coronada de aserrrín fragante
de los aserraderos.
Y no dormíamos en los caminos.
Nos esperaban grupos
de obreros con camisas
recién lavadas y banderas rojas.
Y tú, Poesía,
antes tan desdichadamente tímida,
a la cabeza
fuiste
y todos
se acostumbraron a tu vestidura
de estrella cotidiana,
porque aunque algún relámpago delató tu familia
cumpliste tu tarea,
tu paso entre los pasos de los hombres.
Yo te pedí que fueras
utilitaria y útil,
como metal o harina,
dispuesta a ser arado,
herramienta,
pan y vino,
dispuesta, Poesía,
a luchar cuerpo a cuerpo
y a caer desangrándote.
Y ahora,
Poesía,
gracias, esposa,
hermana o madre
o novia,
gracias, ola marina,
azahar y bandera,
motor de música,
largo pétalo de oro,
campana submarina,
granero
inextinguible,
gracias,
tierra de cada uno
de mis días,
vapor celeste y sangre
de mis años,
porque me acompañaste
desde la más enrarecida altura
hasta la simple mesa
de los pobres,
porque pusiste en mi alma
sabor ferruginoso
y fuego frío,
porque me levantaste
hasta la altura insigne
de los hombres comunes,
Poesía,
porque contigo
mientras me fui gastando
tú continuaste
desarrollando tu frescura firme,
tu ímpetu cristalino,
como si el tiempo
que poco a poco me convierte en tierra
fuera a dejar corriendo eternamente
las aguas de mi canto.
Ode to Poetry
Pablo Neruda
(Translated by Alastair Reid)
Almost fifty years
walking along
with you, poetry.
At the beginning
you tripped me up
and I fell on my face
on the dark ground
or I buried my eyes
in a pool
to see the stars.
Later on you embraced me
with both arms, like a lover.
Finally,
you changed into a drink.
Lovely
it was
to pour you out without draining you,
to make free with your inexhaustible water,
seeing always that one drop
could fall on some burned -out heart
bringing it to life from its ashes.
But
that still was not enough for me. I had gone so far with you
that I'd lost respect for you.
I'd stopped seeing you
as an elusive nymph.
I put you to work as a washerwoman,
selling bread in the bakeries,
spinning with simple weavers,
breaking ore in the iron mines.
And you came with me,
wandering through the world,
but now you were no longer
the flower-bearing
statue of my childhood.
Now you
were speaking
with a strong voice.
Your hands were
hard, like stones.
Your heart was
an overflowing
source of bells,
you made bread with
abundant hands,
you kept me from
falling on my face,
you found me
company,
not just a woman,
not just a man,
but thousands,
millions.
Together, poetry,
we went
to the struggle, to the strike,
to the marches, to the harbours,
to the mine,
and I laughed when you came out
with your forehead smudged with coal
or sprinkled with the fragrant sawdust
at the sawmill.
We no longer slept by the roadside.
Groups of labourers waited for us,
workers with clean shirts
and red sashes.
And you, poetry,
once so painfully shy and awkward,
now moved
to the forefront
and everyone grew familiar with
what you wore, an everyday star;
for although odd flashes of lightning
would sometimes betray your origins,
you fulfilled your task,
your steps mixed with the steps of men.
I asked you to be
practical and useful
like metal or flour,
ready to become a plough, a tool,
bread and wine,
prepared, poetry,
to enter the struggle, hand to hand,
and to fall bleeding.
And now, poetry,
my thanks – wife,
sister, mother
or lover,
thankyou, wave of the sea,
blossom and flag,
mechanism of music,
broad petal of gold,
underwater bell,
bottomless granary;
thankyou,
ground of
every one of my days,
celestial air, and blood
of my growing years;
because you came with me
from the most rarefied heights
to the uncomplicated table
of poor people,
because you lodged in my being
the taste of iron
and cold fire,
because you raised me up
to the glowing heights
of ordinary men,
poetry, because with you
while I went on using myself up
you kept on
unwinding your everlasting freshness,
the inspiration of glass,
as if time,
which bit by bit was turning me into earth,
would allow my singing to go on endlessly
like running water.
(The English translation is quoted from the New England Review (1978-1982), Vol. 1, N°1, Autumn 1978, Middlebury College Publications)