Page 4 of Isla Negra

I stood by truth:

  to establish light in the land.

  I wanted to be common like bread:

  so when the struggle came she wouldn’t find me missing.

  But here I am with what I loved,

  with the solitude I lost:

  but by this stone I don’t rest.

  The sea works in my silence.

  SEAQUAKE

  TRANSLATED BY

  MARIA JACKETTI & DENNIS MALONEY

  Seaquake

  The clocks of the sea,

  the artichokes,

  the blazing money boxes,

  the pockets of the sea

  full of hands,

  the lamps of water,

  the shoes and boots

  of the ocean,

  the mollusks, the sea cucumbers,

  the defiant crabs,

  certain fish that swim and sigh,

  the sea urchins that exit,

  the deep sea’s chestnuts,

  the ocean’s azure umbrellas,

  the broken telegrams,

  the waltz over the waves,

  the seaquake gives all of this to me.

  The waves returned to the Bible:

  page by page the water closed:

  all anger returned to the sea’s center,

  but between my eyes what remains

  are the varied and useless treasures

  that the sea left me, the ocean’s dismantled love

  and shadowy rose.

  Touch this harvest:

  here my hands worked

  the diminutive tombs of salt

  destined for being and substances,

  ferocious in their livid beauty

  in their limestone stigmas,

  fugitives,

  because they will feed us

  and other beings

  with so much flowering and devouring light.

  What the seaquake left at the door,

  the fragile force, the submarine eye,

  the blind animals of the wave,

  push me into the conflict,

  Come! And come! Bid farewell! Oh tempest,

  to my tide hidden by the sea.

  Cockles spilled on the sand,

  slippery arms,

  stomachs of water,

  armor open at the entrance

  of the repetition and the movement,

  quills, suction cups, tongues,

  little cold bodies,

  abused

  by the implacable eternity of water,

  by the wind’s anger.

  Here, being and not being were combined

  in radiant and hungry structures:

  life burns and death passes,

  like a flash of lightning.

  I am the only witness

  to the electricity and the splendor

  that fills the devouring calmness.

  The Picoroco

  The picoroco imprisoned

  in a terrible tower,

  extends a blue claw, palpitates,

  desperate in the storm.

  The picoroco is tender inside its tower:

  white as flour of the sea

  but no one can reach the secret

  of its cold gothic castle.

  * Picoroco–A Chilean shellfish

  Seaweed

  I am the seaweed of the storm

  dashed by the surf:

  the stirrings of shipwrecks

  and the storm’s hands

  moved and instructed me:

  here you have my cold flowers,

  my simulated submission

  to the wind’s judgment:

  I survive the water,

  the salt, the fishermen,

  with my elastic latitude,

  and my vestments of iodine.

  The Sea Urchin

  The sea urchin is the sun of the sea,

  centrifugal and orange,

  full of quills like flames,

  made of eggs and iodine.

  The sea urchin is like the world:

  round, fragile, hidden:

  wet, secret, and hostile:

  the sea urchin is like love.

  Starfish

  When the stars in the sky

  ignore the firmament

  and go off to sleep by day,

  the stars of the water greet

  the sky buried in the sea

  inaugurating the duties

  of the new undersea heavens.

  Shells

  Empty shells of the sand,

  that the sea abandoned when it receded,

  when the sea left to travel,

  to travel through other seas.

  The ocean cast off sea shells

  polished by its mastery,

  whitened by so many kisses

  from the waves that left to travel.

  Crayfish

  Stop! Casual leopards

  of the seashore, curved

  assailants like rosy swords

  from the undersea roughness,

  all biting at the same time,

  undulating like fever

  until they all tumble into the net

  and exit dressed in blue

  destined for scarlet catastrophe.

  Conch Shell

  The conch shell awaits the wind

  asleep in the sea’s light:

  it wants a black-colored voice

  that may fill all the distances

  like the piano of the powerful,

  like God’s horn

  for the scholarly books:

  it wants to blow away their silence

  until the sea immobilizes

  their bitter insistence of lead.

  Seal

  The knot of zoology

  is this functional seal

  that lives in a sack of rubber

  or inside the black light of its skin.

  Inside of her,

  inherent movements circulate

  to the sea’s kingdom

  and one sees this enclosed being

  in the storm’s gymnasium,

  discovering the world encircled

  by staircases of ice,

  until she gazes at us with

  the planet’s most penetrating eyes.

  Sea Anenome

  The flower of the salty boulder

  opens and cancels its crown

  by the will of salt

  with water’s appetite.

  Oh corolla of cold flesh

  and vibrating pistils,

  widow-anenome, intestine.

  Jaiva

  The violet-colored crab

  lurks in the corner of the sea:

  its pincers are the two enigmas:

  its appetite is an abyss.

  Later its armor agonizes

  in a hellish bowl

  and now it is nothing more than a rose:

  the delectable red rose.

  The Bronze Dolphin

  If the dolphin fell into the sea

  it would sink to the bottom, plummet

  with its yellow weight.

  Among true fish

  it would be a foreign object,

  a fish without soul, without language

  until the sea would devour it,

  gnawing on its bronze pride,

  converting it into sand.

  Octopus

  Octopus, oh blood-colored monk,

  the fluttering of your robe

  circulates on the salt of the rock

  like a satanic slickness.

  Oh visceral testimony,

  branch of congealed rays,

  monarchy’s head

  of arms and premonitions:

  portrait of the chill,

  plural cloud of black rain.

  Sun of the Sea

  One day at Isla Negra I found

  a sun sleeping in the sand,

  a centrifugal and central sun

  covered with fingers of gold

  and windswept needles.

  I
picked up the sandy sun

  and raised it to the light,

  comparing it to the sun in the sky.

  They didn’t see each other.

  Swordfish

  Two marine swordfish

  guard the gate of the sea.

  They fling it aside

  They bring the tide

  They fling it wide.

  The swordfish are from Iquique,

  from the blue ocean

  that reaches Vladivostock

  and swells at my feet.

  The swordfish sentinels

  with swords lengthwise

  close the door of the sea

  and prepare to keep watch

  so order doesn’t enter

  the ocean’s chaos.

  Fish Market

  Fish hang by their tails,

  the spilled fish shine,

  the fish display their silver,

  even the crabs still threaten.

  On the huge decorated table,

  through the submarine scales,

  only the body of the sea is missing.

  It does not die; it is not for sale.

  Farewell to the Offerings of the Sea

  Return, return to the sea

  from these pages!

  Fishes, mollusks, seaweed,

  escapees from the cold,

  return to the waist

  of the Pacific,

  to the giddy kiss

  of the wave, to the secret

  logic of rock.

  Oh hidden ones,

  naked ones, submerged ones,

  slippery ones,

  it is the time

  of division and separation:

  paper reclaims me,

  the ink, the inkwells,

  the printing presses, the letters,

  the illustrations,

  the characters and numbers

  jumbled in riverbeds from

  where

  they ambush me: the women,

  and the men

  want my love, ask for my company,

  the children from Petorca,

  from Atacama, from Arauco,

  from Loncoche,

  also want to play with the poet!

  A train waits for me, a ship

  loaded with apples,

  an airplane, a plough,

  some thorns.

  Goodbye, harvested

  fruits of the water, farewell,

  imperially dressed

  shrimps,

  I will return, we will return

  to the unity

  now interrupted.

  I belong to the sand:

  I will return to the round sea

  and to its flora

  and to its fury:

  but for now—I’ll wander

  whistling

  through the streets.

  THE AUTHOR

  Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) is regarded as the greatest Latin American poet of the 20th century. The breadth, vision, and range of themes in his work are extraordinary. Born in the coastal town of Temuco in southern Chile, he moved to the capital, Santiago, in 1921. His first book was published in 1923, and the next year saw the publication of his famous collection, Twenty Poems of Love and One Song of Despair. During the 1920s and 30s, he served as a diplomat in various locations, culminating with an appointment as ambassador to Spain in 1934. These years of poetic and political development were shattered by the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. Neruda’s poetic style shifted significantly to address the social and political concerns of the war. The result was his collection, Spain in My Heart. He returned to Chile in 1938 and began construction of his house at Isla Negra, where he lived, except for periods of exile, until his death in 1973. The poems in this volume reflect his life at Isla Negra and are taken from three collections: A House in the Sand (Una casa en la arena, 1966,) The Stones of Chile (Las piedras de Chile, 1961), and Seaquake (Maremoto, 1969). Pablo Neruda won the Nobel Prize in 1971.

  THE TRANSLATORS

  Maria Jacketti is a poet, fiction writer, and translator. She teaches at St. Peter’s College in New Jersey. Her other books of translation include A Gabriela Mistral Reader and three books by Pablo Neruda: Heaven Stones, Neruda’s Garden: An Anthology of Odes, and Ceremonial Songs.

  Dennis Maloney is a poet, translator, and landscape architect. His other books of translation include The Landscape of Soria by Antonio Machado, Naked Woman by Juan Ramon Jimenez, Between the Floating Mist: Poems of Ryokan and Tangled Hair: Poems of Yosano Akiko. Several volumes of his own poetry have been published, including The Map is Not the Territory.

  Clark M. Zlotchew is a writer, translator, and professor of Spanish at the State University of New York College at Fredonia. His translations include Seven Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges and Falling Through the Cracks, stories by Julio Ricci.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Half Title Page

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Isla Negra

  The House in the Sand

  The Sea

  The Key

  The Agates

  The House

  The People

  The Names

  The Medusa

  The Anchor

  Love for This Book

  The Stones of Chile

  Some Words for a Book of Stone

  History

  The Bull

  The Dead Sailor

  The Shipwrecked

  Solitudes

  The Stones of Chile

  House

  The Blind Statue

  Ox

  The Harp

  Theater of the Gods

  The Lion

  I Will Return

  The Great Stone Table

  Where the Thirsty Fell

  The Portrait in the Rock

  The Ship

  The Rugged Ship

  The Creation

  The Tomb of Victor Hugo on Isla Negra

  The Three Ducklings

  The Turtle

  The Heart of Stone

  Air in the Stone

  To a Wrinkled Boulder

  The Stones and the Birds

  To the Traveler

  The Tender Bulk

  Bird

  Stones for Maria

  Antarctic Stones

  Nothing More

  Seaquake

  Seaquake

  The Picoroco

  Seaweed

  The Sea Urchin

  Starfish

  Shells

  Crayfish

  Conch Shell

  Seal

  Sea Anenome

  Jaiva

  The Bronze Dolphin

  Octopus

  Sun of the Sea

  Swordfish

  Fish Market

  Farewell to the Offerings of the Sea

  The Author

  The Translators

 


 

  Pablo Neruda, Isla Negra

  (Series: # )

 

 


 

 
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