Leave Me a Place Underground
Leave me a place underground, a labyrinth,
where I can go, when I wish to turn,
without eyes, without touch,
in the void, to dumb stone,
or the finger of shadow.
I know that you cannot, no one, no thing
can deliver up that place, or that path,
but what can I do with my pitiful passions,
if they are no use, on the surface
of everyday life,
if I cannot look to survive,
except by dying, going beyond, entering
into the state, metallic and slumbering,
of primeval flame?—Pablo Neruda, from Stones of the Sky (Copper Canyon Press, 1987)
Posts tagged Pablo Neruda:
I take the word and move
through it, as if it were
only a human form,
its lines delight me and I sail
in each resonance of language:
I utter and I am
and across the boundary of words,
without speaking, I approach silence.
—Pablo Neruda, from “The Word,” in Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon: Selected Poems, translated from the Spanish by Stephen Mitchell (HarperFlamingo, 1998)
I’m a journeyman fisherman
of living wet verses
that break through the veins;
it’s all I was good for …
now leave me alone with my ocean:
I was born for a handful of fishes.
—Pablo Neruda, from “Little Devils” in Pablo Neruda, Late and Posthumous Poems: 1968-1974 (Grove Press, 1988)
Photograph: Mitchell Krog, Secluded, n.d.
To all of that breed, we confirmed melancholiacs
uselessly taking the brunt of our private afflictions
and borrowing others, brooding too long about
trifles till molehills turn into mountains and we shrivel—
for all of us malcontents, I’ve a simple placebo:
the blue hygiene of the wind and a day in the sun,
a wild volley of air repeated relentlessly
on the open Atlantic shipping out in mid-ocean—
and yes, that constancy, too, that renders the body’s
well-being no part of my theme: I speak for the soul.
I say: let the trifles that strangle us be seen merely as
trifles, remediable inequities. Then when the wind has had its way with us
we can see ourselves as we are, face to face with the invisible.
—Pablo Neruda, closing strophe to “A Heavy Surf” in Pablo Neruda Late and Posthumous Poems: 1968-1974, edited by Ben Belitt (Grove Press, 1988)
What I want shouldn’t be confused
with final inactivity:
life alone is what matters,
I want nothing to do with death.
If we weren’t unanimous
about keeping our lives so much in motion,
if we could do nothing for once,
perhaps a great silence would
interrupt this sadness,
this never understanding ourselves
and threatening ourselves with death,
perhaps the earth is teaching us
when everything seems to be dead
and then everything is alive.
—Pablo Neruda, from “Keeping Quiet” in Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon: Selected Poems, translated from the Spanish by Stephen Mitchell (HarperFlamingo, 1997)
My love, suddenly
your hip
is the full curve
of the wineglass,
your breast is a cluster,
your hair is alcohol’s light,
your nipples are the grapes,
your navel is a pure seal
stamped on the vessel of your belly,
and your love is the inexhaustible
cascade of wine,
the brightness that falls on my senses,
the earthly splendor of life.
—Pablo Neruda, from “Ode to Wine” in Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon: Selected Poems of Pablo Neruda, translated from the Spanish by Stephen Mitchell (HarperFlamingo, 1998)
Where is the center of the sea?
Why do waves never go there?
—Pablo Neruda, from The Book Of Questions, translation by William O’Daly (Copper Canyon Press, 1991)
(Source: ojo-rojo)
I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body…
and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.
—Pablo Neruda, from “Love Sonnet XI” (via misterfoxsecretlair)
(via rclinkdump)
But I love your feet
only because they walked
upon the earth and upon
the wind and upon the waters,
until they found me.
—Pablo Neruda, from “Your Feet” in The Captain’s Verses: The Love Poems (New Directions, 1972)
Someday, somewhere—anywhere, unfailingly, you’ll find yourself, and that, and only that, can be the happiest or bitterest hour of your life.
—Pablo Neruda (via man-of-prose)
(via merlinaminervamerlot)
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