Sublime Blue: Selected Early Odes by Pablo Neruda (7 page)

Tengo las manos blancas

de dar pan en las panaderías.

Donde vayas,

pobreza,

mi canto

está cantando,

mi vida

está viviendo,

mi sangre

está luchando.

you will find me singing,

under

every hospital sheet

you will run into my song.

I follow you,

Poverty,

I watch you,

I approach,

I open fire,

I isolate you,

I cut your claws,

I tear out the teeth

you have left.

I am

everywhere:

In the ocean with the fishermen,

in the mines

where men

wipe their foreheads,

drying their black sweat,

they encounter

my poems.

I go out everyday

with the textile worker.

I have white hands

from giving out loaves at the bakery.

Where you go,

Poverty,

my song

is being sung,

my life

is being lived,

my blood

is struggling.

Derrotaré

tus pálidas banderas

en donde se levanten.

Otros poetas

antaño te llamaron

santa,

veneraron tu capa,

se alimentaron de humo

y desaparecieron.

Yo te desafío,

con duros versos te golpeo el rostro,

te embarco y te destierro.

Yo con otros,

con otros, muchos otros,

te vamos expulsando

de la tierra a la luna

para que allí te quedes

fría y encarcelada

mirando con un ojo

el pan y los racimos

que cubrirá la tierra

de mañana.

I trample

your pale flags

wherever they are raised.

Other poets

in times past called you

Saint,

they venerated your cloak,

they fed upon vapors

and they vanished.

I defy you,

with tough verses I batter your face,

I deport you and I exile you.

I with others,

yes others, many others,

we are going to banish you

from earth to the moon

so that there you remain

cold and incarcerated

watching with one eye

the loaves and clusters of fruit

that will cloak the earth

tomorrow.

Vino color de día,

vino color de noche,

vino con pies de púrpura

o sangre de topacio,

vino,

estrellado hijo

de la tierra,

vino, liso

como una espada de oro,

suave

como un desordenado terciopelo,

vino encaracolado

y suspendido,

amoroso,

marino,

nunca has cabido en una copa,

en un canto, en un hombre,

coral, gregario eres,

y cuando menos, mutuo.

A veces

te nutres de recuerdos

mortales,

en tu ola

vamos de tumba en tumba,

picapedrero de sepulcro helado,

y lloramos

lágrimas transitorias,

pero

tu hermoso

traje de primavera

es diferente,

el corazón sube a las ramas,

el viento mueve el día,

nada queda

Wine the color of day,

color of night,

wine with purple feet

or topaz blood,

wine,

star-child

of earth,

wine smooth

as a golden sword,

gentle

as rumpled velvet,

encased in the swirl-shell

of snail,

amorous, marine,

there's never room for you in one cup,

one song, one man;

you are choral, gregarious,

reciprocal, to say the least.

At times

you feed on deadly

memories,

and on your wave

we go from grave to grave,

carver of an icy sepulcher,

and we weep

our transitory tears,

but

your beautiful

spring dress

is quite another matter,

heart rises through the limbs,

wind moves the day,

nothing remains

dentro de tu alma inmóvil.

El vino

mueve la primavera,

crece como una planta la alegría,

caen muros,

peñascos,

se cierran los abismos,

nace el canto.

Oh tú, jarra de vino, en el desierto

con la sabrosa que amo,

dijo el viejo poeta.

Que el cántaro de vino

al beso del amor sume su beso.

Amor mio, de pronto

tu cadera

es la curva colmada

de la copa,

tu pecho es el racimo,

la luz del alcohol tu cabellera,

las uvas tus pezones,

tu ombligo sello puro

estampado en tu vientre de vasija,

y tu amor la cascada

de vino inextinguible,

la claridad que cae en mis sentidos,

el esplendor terrestre de la vida.

Pero no sólo amor,

beso quemante

o corazón quemado

eres, vino de vida,

sino

amistad de los seres, transparencia,

coro de disciplina,

abundancia de flores.

in your stilled soul.

Wine

stirs spring,

swells like vegetal joy,

walls fall back

and great stones,

chasms are sealed

as song is born.

The ancient poet said,

Oh you, jug of wine, in the wilderness,

and I with my sweetheart, my beloved.

Thus does the flowing wine

add to the kiss of love

a kiss of its own.

My love, your hip

suddenly

is the brimming curve

of the wine glass,

your breast is the cluster,

your long tresses luminous with spirits,

your nipples the grapes,

your navel the virgin seal stamped

upon the vessel of your belly,

and your love is the cascade

of inextinguishable wine,

the clarity that illuminates my senses,

the terrestrial splendor of life.

But you are not only love,

the sear of a kiss

or the blazing heart,

more than the wine of life,

for you are also the companionship

of essences, transparency,

the choir of discipline,

the multitudinous flowers.

Amo sobre una mesa,

cuando se habla,

la luz de una botella

de inteligente vino.

Que lo beban,

que recuerden en cada

gota de oro

o copa de topacio

o cuchara de púrpura

que trabajó el otoño

hasta llenar de vino las vasijas

y aprenda el hombre oscuro,

en el ceremonial de su negocio,

a recordar la tierra y sus deberes,

a propagar el cántico del fruto.

I love it when at table,

where we are talking,

the brilliance from a bottle

of vintner's genius flashes forth.

Drink,

and remember in each

drop of gold

or cup of topaz

or spoonful of purple

how autumn worked

to fill the vessels with wine,

and through the rituals of his concerns

let the unsung man learn

how to remember the earth and his obligations,

how to propagate the canticle of the grape.

W
illiam Pitt Root's
numerous poetry collections include
The Storm and Other Poems, Reasons For Pitt Root.
Honors accorded his poetry, which appears in
The Atlantic, New Yorker, The Nation,
and
Poetry,
include grants from the Rockefeller and Guggenheim Foundations, and the National Endowment for the Arts; a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford and a United States/United Kingdom Exchange Artist Fellowship. Root's work, published in twenty languages, has won the Stanley Kunitz Prize and Guy Owen awards, and three Pushcart Prizes.

Root's academic career includes periods at Hunter College-CUNY, the University of Montana, Amherst College, Interlochen Arts Academy, New York University, and Distinguished Visiting Writer residencies at Pacific Lutheran and Wichita State Universities. Most recently he has served as the John C. Hodges visiting writer at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He and his wife, poet Pamela Uschuk, live primarily in the West with a cadre of four-legged companions and enjoy traveling widely to teach and read from their works at home and abroad.

As a child growing up where the Everglades met the Gulf of Mexico, Root often smuggled a radio into his bed nights so he could hear the late night Spanish broadcasts from Havana. “That music came from a part of the universe where people knew how to live their lives far more passionately than anyone I'd ever met. I was mesmerized and heartened by all that energy, all that poetry, as a kid. I still am.”

M
any of these
translations first appeared in slightly different versions in the following periodicals and anthologies:
Anthology and Yearbook of Magazine Verse, Asheville Poetry Review, CutBank, Historical Mathematics Network Journal, International Virtual Institute for Historical Studies of Mathematics, Mississippi Mud, The Proud Word,
and
Telescope.

Colophon

This first edition of
Sublime Blue: Selected Early Odes of Pablo Neruda,
translated by William Pitt Root, has been printed on 55 pound Edwards Brothers Natural Paper containing a high percentage of recycled fiber. Titles have been set in Colonna MT type, the text in Adobe Caslon type. All Wings Press books are designed and produced by Bryce Milligan.

On-line catalogue and ordering:

www.wingspress.com

Wings Press titles are distributed

to the trade by the

Independent Publishers Group

www.ipgbook.com

and in Europe by

www.gazellebookservices.co.uk

Also available as an ebook.