Neruda And Vallejo: Selected Poems Part 44

At the border of a flowering grave, two marys go into the past, weeping, weeping whole seas.

The ostrich stripped of its memory stretches out its last feather, and with it the denying hand of Peter carves on Palm Sunday resonances of funeral services and stones.

From the border of a stirred-up grave two marys drift away, singing.

Monday.

Translated by James Wright

XLV.

Me desvinculo del mar cuando vienen las aguas a m.

Salgamos siempre. Saboreemos la cancin estupenda, la cancin dicha por los labios inferiores del deseo.

Oh prodigiosa doncellez.

Pasa la brisa sin sal.

A los lejos husmeo los tuetanos oyendo el tanteo profundo, a la caza de teclas de resaca.

Y si as dieramos las narices en el absurdo, nos cubriremos con el oro de no tener nada, y empollaremos el ala an no nacida de la noche, hermana de esta ala huerfana del da, que a fuerza de ser una ya no es ala.

XLV.

I am freed from the burdens of the sea when the waters come toward me.

Let us always sail out. Let us taste the marvelous song, the song spoken by the lower lips of desire.

Oh beautiful virginity.

The saltless breeze pa.s.ses.

From the distance, I breathe marrows, hearing the profound score, as the surf hunts for its keys.

And if we banged into the absurd, we shall cover ourselves with the gold of owning nothing, and hatch the still unborn wing of the night, sister of the orphaned wing of the day, that is not really a wing since it is only one.

Translated by James Wright

LXXVII.

Graniza tanto, como para que yo recuerde y acreciente las perlas que he recogido del hocico mismo de cada tempestad.

No se vaya a secar esta lluvia.

A menos que me fuese dado caer ahora para ella, o que me enterrasen mojado en el agua que surtiera de todos los fuegos.

Hasta dnde me alcanzar esta lluvia?

Temo me quede con algn flanco seco ; temo que ella se vaya, sin haberme probado en las sequas de increbles cuerdas vocales, por las que para dar armona, hay siempre que subir nunca bajar!

No subimos acaso para abajo?

Canta, lluvia, en la costa an sin mar!

LXXVII.

So much hail that I remember, and pile on a few pearls to those I have pulled right from under the snout of the other storms.

I don't want this rain to dry up.

At least not unless they let me fall right now instead of it, or unless they buried me soaked in the water shooting up from every fire in the world.

I wonder where the water-line on my body will be?

I'm afraid I'll be left with one of my sides dry.

I'm afraid the rain will end before I'm tested in the bone-dry months of the incredible vocal chords, where to create harmony we have to rise always! and never go down!

Well, don't we rise, really, to go down?

Sing on, rain, on this coast still with no sea!

Translated by Robert Bly

and James Wright

from Codigo Civil

and

Poemas Humanos

1939.

EL BUEN SENTIDO.

-Hay, madre, un sitio en el mundo, que se llama Pars. Un sitio muy grande y lejano y otra vez grande.

Mi madre me ajusta el cuello del abrigo, no por que empieza a nevar, sino para que empiece a nevar.

La mujer de mi padre est enamorada de m, viniendo y avanzando de espaldas a mi nacimiento y de pecho a mi muerte. Que soy dos veces suyo: por el adis y por el regreso. La cierro, al retornar. Por eso me dieran tnto sus ojos, justa de mi, infraganti de m, aconteciendose por obras terminadas, por pactos consumados.

Mi madre est confesa de m, nombrada de m? Cmo no da otro tanto a mis otros hermanos? A Vctor, por ejemplo, el mayor, que es tan viejo ya, que las gentes dicen: Parece hermano menor de su padre! Fuere porque yo he viajado mucho! Fuere porque yo he vivido ms!

Mi madre acuerda carta de principio colorante a mis relatos de regreso. Ante mi vida de regreso, recordando que viaje durante dos corazones por su vientre, se ruboriza y se queda mortalmente lvida, cuando digo, en el tratado del alma: Aquella noche fu dichoso. Pero ms se pone triste ; ms se pusiera triste.

-Hijo, cmo ests viejo!

THE RIGHT MEANING.

"Mother, you know there is a place somewhere called Paris. It's a huge place and a long way off and it really is huge."

My mother turns up my coat collar, not because it's starting to snow, but in order that it may start.

My father's wife is in love with me, walking up, always keeping her back to my birth, and her face toward my death. Because I am hers twice: by my good-bye and by my coming home. When I return home, I close her. That is why her eyes gave me so much, p.r.o.nounced innocent of me, caught in the act of me, everything occurs through finished arrangements, through covenants carried out.

Has my mother confessed me, has she been named publicly? Why doesn't she give so much to my other brothers? To Victor, for example, the oldest, who is so old now that people say, "He looks like his father's youngest brother!" It must be because I have traveled so much! It must be because I have lived more!

My mother gives me illuminated permissions to explore my coming-home tales. Face to face with my returning-home life, remembering that I journeyed for two whole hearts through her womb, she blushes and goes deathly pale when I say in the discourse of the soul: "That night I was happy!" But she grows more sad, she grew more sad.

"How old you're getting, son!"

Y desfila por el color amarillo a llorar, porque me halla envejecido, en la hoja de espada, en la desembocadura de mi rostro. Llora de m, se entristece de m. Que falta har mi mocedad, si siempre sere su hijo? Por que las madres se duelen de hallar envejecidos a sus hijos, si jams la edad de ellos alcanzar a la de ellas? Y por que, si los hijos, cuanto ms se acaban, ms se aproximan a los padres? Mi madre llora porque estoy viejo de mi tiempo y porque nunca llegare a envejecer del suyo!

Mi adis parti de un punto de su ser, ms externo que el punto de su ser al que retorno. Soy, a causa del excesivo plazo de mi vuelta, ms el hombre ante mi madre que el hijo ante mi madre. All reside el candor que hoy nos alumbra con tres llamas. Le digo entonces hasta que me callo: -Hay, madre, en el mundo, un sitio que se llama Pars. Un sitio muy grande y muy lejano y otra vez grande.

La mujer de mi padre, al orme, almuerza y sus ojos mortales descienden suavemente por mis brazos.

And she walks firmly through the color yellow to cry, because I seem to her to be getting old, on the blade of the sword, in the delta of my face. Weeps with me, grows sad with me. Why should my youth be necessary, if I will always be her son? Why do mothers feel pain when their sons get old, if their age will never equal anyway the age of the mothers? And why, if the sons, the more they get on, merely come nearer to the age of the fathers? My mother cries because I am old in my time and because I will never get old enough to be old in hers!

My good-byes left from a point in her being more toward the outside than the point in her being to which I come back. I am, because I am so overdue coming back, more the man to my mother than the son to my mother. The purity that lights us both now with three flames lies precisely in that. I say then until I finally fall silent: "Mother, you know there is a place somewhere called Paris. It's a huge place and a long way off and it really is huge."

The wife of my father, hearing my voice, goes on eating her lunch, and her eyes that will die descend gently along my arms.

Translated by Robert Bly