Pablo Neruda (July 12, 1904 – September 23, 1973) was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean poet, diplomat and politician Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. He chose his pen name after Czech poet Jan Neruda. In 1971 Neruda won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Neruda became known as a poet while still a teenager. He wrote in a variety of styles including surrealist poems, historical epics, overtly political manifestos, a prose autobiography, and erotically-charged love poems such as the ones in his 1924 collection Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. He often wrote in green ink as it was his personal symbol for desire and hope with his poetry.
ODE TO NIGHTTIME
Pablo Neruda
Behind
daylight,
behind every tree and rock,
behind every brook,
night,
you rush around working
or you rest,
waiting
for your retracted roots
to grow into foliage or flower.
You thrash around the sky
like
a flag,
you pour yourself into
sierras and seas
and the smallest cavities, too:
the exhausted peasant’s hardened eyes
and the black coral
of people’s mouths
opened wide in sleep.
You run wild
over the savage flow
of rivers,
you penetrate, night, hidden paths
and love’s deep constellations—
tangle of naked bodies—
and crimes that splatter
the shadows with screams.
All the while trains
stay on schedule, stokers
feed night-black coal to red fire.
The overworked accountant
wanders deep in a forest
of petrified papers,
and bakers knead
mounds of whiteness.
Night also sleeps
like a blind horse.
It’s raining
all over the country:
on the huge trees
of my homeland
and on roofs
of corrugated metal
night’s song
is heard.
Rain and darkness are the blade
of a singing sword
while stars, or jasmine petals,
gaze
from blackened heights:
they are signs
that, little by little,
with time’s slow passage,
we will come to understand.
Nighttime,
my nighttime,
night of the whole earth,
you bear something
within you, something round
like a child
about to be born, like a
bursting
seed:
it’s a miracle,
it’s daylight.
Your beauty is all the greater
because you nourish this budding poppy
with the darkness that flows in your veins,
because you work with eyes closed
so that other eyes may open
and the water may sing,
so that our lives
might be born again.
==========
ODE TO THANKS
Pablo Neruda
Thanks to the word
that says thanks!
Thanks to thanks,
word
that melts
iron and snow!
The world is a threatening place
until
thanks
makes the rounds
from one pair of lips to another,
soft as a bright
feather
and sweet as a petal of sugar,
filling the mouth with its sound
or else a mumbled
whisper.
Life becomes human again:
it’s no longer an open window.
A bit of brightness
strikes into the forest,
and we can sing again beneath the leaves.
Thanks, you’re the medicine we take
to save us from
the bite of scorn.
Your light brightens the altar of harshness.
Or maybe
a tapestry
known
to far distant peoples.
Travelers
fan out
into the wilds,
and in the jungle
of strangers,
merci
rings out
while the hustling train
changes countries,
sweeping away borders,
then spasibo
clinging to pointy
volcanoes, to fire and freezing cold,
or danke, yes! and gracias, and
the world turns into a table:
a single word has wiped it clean,
plates and glasses gleam,
silverware tinkles,
and the tablecloth is as broad as a plain.
Thank you, thanks,
for going out and returning,
for rising up
and settling down.
We know, thanks,
that you don’t fill every space-
you’re only a word-
but
where your little petal
appears
the daggers of pride take cover,
and there’s a penny’s worth of smiles.
========
THE TIGER
Pablo Neruda
I am the tiger
I lie in wait for you among leaves
broad as ingots
of wet mineral.
The white river grows
beneath the fog. You come.
Naked you submerge.
I wait.
Then in a leap
of fire, blood, teeth,
with a claw slash I tear away
your bosom, your hips.
I drink your blood, I break
your limbs one by one.
And I remain watching
for years in the forest
over your bones, your ashes,
motionless, far
from hatred and anger,
disarmed in your death,
crossed by lianas,
motionless in the rain,
relentless sentinel
of my murderous love.