Pablo Neruda: poet extraordinaire

[Anonymous]

United Fruit Co.

by poet Pablo Neruda (Nobel Laureate) from Canto General

When the trumpet blared everything
on earth was prepared
and Jehova distributed the world
to Coca Cola Inc., Anaconda,
Ford Motors and other entities:
United Fruit Inc.
reserved for itself the juiciest,
the central seaboard of my land,
America's sweet waist.
It rebabtized its lands
the "Banana Republics,"
and upon the slumbering corpses,
upon the restless heroes
who conquered renown,
freedom, flags,
it established the comic opera:
it alienated self-destiny,
regaled Caesar's crowns,
unsheathed envy, drew
the dictatorship of flies:
Trujillo flies, Tacho flies,
Carías flies, Martínez flies,
Ubico flies, flies soaked
in humble blood and jam,
drunken flies that drone
over the common graves,
circus flies, clever flies
versed in tyranny.

Among the bloodthirsty flies
the Fruit Co. disembarks,
ravaging coffee and fruits
for its ships that spirit away
our submerged lands' treasures
like serving trays.

Meanwhile, in the seaports'
sugary abysses,
Indians collapsed, buried
in the morning mist:
a body rolls down, a nameless
thing, a fallen number,
a bunch of lifeless fruit
dumped in the rubbish heap.

See the chronology:

http://www.unitedfruit.org/chronology.html





(Edited by Edward Penishands at 5:37 pm on Feb. 19, 2003)

[Anonymous]

(Pablo Neruda's Song of Protest)



http://www.rose-hulman.edu/~delacova/sandi...o-sandino-1.jpg (http://www.rose-hulman.edu/~delacova/sandino/augusto-sandino-1.jpg)

X

That Friend



Later Sandino crossed the jungle,

he unloaded his sacred gunpowder

against assaulting sailors

grown and paid for in New York:

the earth burned, the foliage resounded:

the Yankee did not expect what was happening:

he dressed very well for war

shining shoes and weapons

but through experience he soon learned

who Sandino and Nicaragua were:

it was a tomb of blond thieves:

air, tree, road, water

Sandino' s guerrillas came forth

even from the whiskey that was opened,

which sickened with quick death

the glorious Louisiana fighters

accustomed to hanging blacks

with superhuman valor:

two thousand hooded men busy

with one black man, a rope and a tree.

Affairs were different here:

Sandino attacked and waited,

Sandino was the coming night,

he was the light from the sea that killed.

Sandino was a tower with flags,

Sandino was a rifle with hopes.

These were very different lessons,

at West Point learning was clean:

they were never taught at school

that he who kills could also die:

the North Americans did not learn

that we love our sad beloved land

and that we will defend the flags

that with pain and love were created.

If they did not learn this in Philadelphia

they found it out through blood in Nicaragua:

the captain of the people waited there:

Agusto C. Sandino he was called.

And in this song his name will remain

full of wonder like a sudden blaze

so that it can give us light and fire

in the continuation of his battles.



XI

Treason

For peace, on a sad night

General Sandino was invited

to dine, to celebrate his courage,

with the "American" Ambassador

(for the name of the whole continent

these pirates have usurped).

General Sandino was joyous:

wine and drinks raised to his health:

the Yankees were returning to their land

desolately defeated

and the banquet sealed with honors

the struggle of Sandino and his brothers.

The assassin waited at the table.

He was a mysterious spineless being

raising his cup time and again

while in his pocket resounded

the thirty horrendous dollars of the crime.

O feast of bloodied wine!

O night, O false moonlit paths!

O pale stars that did not speak!

O land mute and blind by night!

Earth that did not restrain his horse!

O treasonous night that betrayed

the tower of honor into evil hands!

O banquet of silver and agony!

O shadow of premeditated treason!

O pavilion of light that flourised,

since then defeated and mourned!



XII

Death

Sandino stood up not knowing

that his victory had ended

as the Ambassador pointed him out

thus fulfilling his part of the pact:

everything was arranged for the crime

between the assasssin and the North American.

And at the door as they embraced him

they bade him farewell condemning him.

Congratulations! And Sandino took his leave

walking with the executioner and death.

[Anonymous]

Martinez (by Pablo Neruda, from Canto General)



Martinez, the quack

from El Salvador, distributes flasks

of multicolored remedies

which the ministers accept

with deep bows and scraping.

The little vegetarian witch doctor

passes his time prescribing in the palace

while torturous hunger

howls in the cane fields.

Martinez then decrees:

and in a few days twenty thousand

assassinated peasants

decompose in the villages

that Martinez orders burned

with ordinances of hygiene.

Back in the Palace he returns

to his syrups, and he receives

the American ambassador's

swift congratulations.

"Western culture

is safe," says he ---

"western Christianity,

and besides, good business,

banana concessions

and control of customs."



And together they drink a long

glass of champagne, while hot

rain falls on the putrid

gatherings of the charnel house.

[Anonymous]

http://www.pir.org/chile.html

Poem from Pablo Neruda's Canto General

Anaconda Mining Co.


Name of a coiled snake,
insatiable gullet, green monster,
in the clustered heights,
in my country's rarefied
saddle, beneath the moon
of hardness--excavator--
you open the mineral's
lunar craters, the galleries
of virgin copper, sheathed
in its granite sands.

In Chuquicamata's eternal
night, in the heights,
I've seen the sacrificial fire burn,
the profuse crackling
of the cyclops that devoured the Chileans' hands, weight
and waist, coiling them
beneath its copper vertebrae,
draining their warm blood,
crushing their skeletons
and spitting them out in the
desolate desert wastelands.

Air resounds in the heights
of starry Chuquicamata.
The galleries annihilate
the planet's resistance
with man's little hands,
the gorges' sulphuric bird
trembles, the metal's
iron cold mutinies
with its sullen scars,
and when the horns blast
the earth swallows a procession
of minuscule men who descend
to the crater's mandibles.

They're tiny captains,
my nephews, my children,
and when they pour the ingots
toward the seas, wipe
their brows and return shuddering
to the uttermost chill,
the great serpent eats them up,
reduces them, crushes them,
covers them with malignant spittle,
casts them out to the roads,
murders them with police,
sets them to rot in Pisagua,
imprisons them, spits on them,
buys a trecherous president
who insults and persecutes them,
kills them with hunger on the plains
of the sandy immensity.

And on the infernal slopes
there's cross after twisted cross,
the only kindling scattered
by the tree of mining.

[Anonymous]

Another Sandino poem

http://www.rose-hulman.edu/~delacova/sandi...o-sandino-1.jpg (http://www.rose-hulman.edu/~delacova/sandino/augusto-sandino-1.jpg)

by Pablo Neruda from his collection of verse Canto General

XXXVII

It was when the crosses

were buried

in our land--- they were spent,

invalid, professional.

The dollar came with agressive teeth

to bite territory,

in America's pastoral throat.

It seized Panama with powerful jaws,

sank its fangs into the fresh earth,

wallowed in mud, whisky, blood,

and swore in a President with a frock coat:

"Give us this day our

daily bribe."

Later, steel came,

and the canal segregated residences,

the masters here, the servants there.

They rushed to Nicaragua.

They disembarked, dressed in white,

firing dollars and bullets.

But there a captain rose forth,

saying: "No, here you're not putting

your concessions, your bottle."

They promised him a portrait

of the President, with gloves,

ribbons, and patent leather

shoes, recently acquired.

Sandino took off his boots,

plunged into the quivering swamps,

wore the wet ribbon

of freedom in the jungle,

and bullet by bullet, he answered

the "civilizers."

North American fury

was indescribable: documented

ambassadors convinced

the world that their love was

Nicaragua, sooner or later

order must reach

its sleepy intestines.

Sandino hanged the intruders.

The Wall Street heroes

were devoured by the swamp,

a thunderbolt struck them down,

more than one machete followed them,

a noose awakened them

like a serpent in the night,

and hanging from a tree they were

carried off slowly

by blue beetles

and devouring vines.

Sandino was in the silence,

in the Plaza of the People,

everywhere Sandino,

killing North Americans,

executing invaders.

And when the air corps came,

the offensive of the armed

forces, the incision of

pulverizing powers,

Sandino, with his guerrillas,

was a jungle specter,

a coiled tree

or a sleeping tortoise

or a gliding river.

But tree, tortoise, current

were avenging death,

jungle systems,

the spider's mortal symptoms.

(In 1948

a guerrilla

from Greece, Sparta column,

was the urn of light attacked

by the dollar's mercenaries.

From the mountains he fired

on the octupi from Chicago

and, like Sandino, the stalwart man

from Nicaragua, he was named

"the mountain bandit.")

But when fire, blood,

and dollar didn't destroy

Sandino's proud tower,

the Wall Street guerrillas

made peace, invited

the guerrilla to celebrate,

and a newly hired traitor

shot him with his rifle.

His name is Somoza. To this day

he's ruling in Nicaragua:

the thirty dollars grew

and multiplied in his belly.

This is the story of Sandino,

captain from Nicaragua,

heartbreaking incarnation

of our sand betrayed,

divided and assailed,

martyred and sacked.






(Edited by Edward Penishands at 5:40 pm on Feb. 19, 2003)

[Kodzoquo]

"If You Forget Me"


I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists:
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loveing me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

By Pablo Neruda
In English:
(En Inglés)

-------------
""Si Tu Me Olvidas"
By Pablo Neruda
En Español:
(In Spanish)

Quiero que sepas
una cosa.

Tú sabes cómo es esto:
si miro
la luna de cristal, la rama roja
del lento otoño en mi ventana,
si toco
junto al fuego
la impalpable ceniza
o el arrugado cuerpo de la leña,
todo me lleva a ti,
como si todo lo que existe:
aromas, luz, metales,
fueran pequeños barcos que navegan
hacia las islas tuyas que me aguardan.

Ahora bien,
si poco a poco dejas de quererme
dejaré de quererte poco a poco.

Si de pronto
me olvidas
no me busques,
que ya te habré olvidado.

Si consideras largo y loco
el viento de banderas
que pasa por mi vida
y te decides
a dejarme a la orilla
del corazón en que tengo raíces,
piensa
que en esa día,
a esa hora
levantaré los brazos
y saldrán mis raíces
a buscar otra tierra.

Pero
si cada día,
cada hora,
sientes que a mí estás destinada
con dulzura implacable,
si cada día sube
una flor a tus labios a buscarme,
ay amor mío, ay mía,
en mí todo ese fuego se repite,
en mí nada se apaga ni se olvida,
mi amor se nutre de tu amor, amada,
y mientras vivas estará en tus brazos
sin salir de los míos.

http://www.geocities.com/nerudapoet/captai.../ifyoutrans.htm (http://www.geocities.com/nerudapoet/captain/ifyoutrans.htm)






(Edited by Kodzoquo at 9:38 am on Oct. 18, 2002)


(Edited by Kodzoquo at 9:40 am on Oct. 18, 2002)

[Panamarisen]

Just BEAUTIFUL, people...!
Try also Vicente Huidrobo (born in Chile, too). He is amazing. I´m sure there are translations of his books of poems in English. He writes about our inner self, the inner self of EVERYONE of us. He is not easy to read or understand at times, but you´ll love his poetry.

HASTA LA VICTORIA SIEMPRE!

[deadpool 52]

One of the greatest poets of all time.

[Anonymous]

The Earth's Name is Juan (by Pablo Neruda, from Canto General).

Juan followed upon the liberators working, fishing and fighting, in his carpentry work or in his damp mine. His hands have plowed the earth and measured the roads.

His bones are everywhere. But he's alive. He returned from the earth.

He was born. He was born again like an eternal plant. All the impure night tried to submerge him and today he affirms his indomitable lips in the dawn.

They bound him, and he's now a determined soldier.

They wounded him, and he's still hearty as an apple.

They cut off his hands, and today he pounds with them.

They buried him, and he sings along with us.

Juan, the door and the road is yours, people, truth was born with you, with your blood.

They couldn't exterminate you.

Your roots, tree of humanity, tree of eternity, are today defended with steel, are today defended with your own grandeur in the Soviet land, armored against the snaps of the moribund wolf.

People, order was born of suffering.

Your victorious flag was born of order.

Hoist it with all the hands that fell, defend it with all the hands that are joined: and let the unity of your invisible faces advance to the final struggle, to the star.









(Edited by Edward Penishands at 9:05 pm on Mar. 26, 2003)

[Lefty]

Genius. On the level of the best of anything else I've ever read.

[Anonymous]

XIX

To Fidel Castro (by Pablo Neruda, Song of Protest)

Fidel, Fidel, the people are grateful
for words in action and deeds that sing,
that is why I bring from far
a cup of my country’s wine:
it is the blood of a subterranean people
that from the shadows reaches your throat,
they are miners who have lived for centuries
extracting fire from the frozen land.
They go beneath the sea for coal
but on returning they are like ghosts:
they grew accustomed to eternal night,
the working-day light was robbed from them,
nevertheless here is the cup
of so much suffering and distances:
the happiness of imprisoned men
possessed by darkness and illusions
who from the inside of mines perceive
the arrival of spring and its fragrances
because they know that Man is struggling
to reach the amplest clarity.
And Cuba is seen by the Southern miners,
the lonely sons of la pampa,
the shepherds of cold in Patagonia,
the fathers of tin and silver,
the ones who marry cordilleras
extract the copper from Chuquicamata,
men hidden in buses
in populations of pure nostalgia,
women of the fields and workshops,
children who cried away their childhoods:
this is the cup, take it, Fidel.
It is full of so much hope
that upon drinking you will know your victory
is like the aged wine of my country
made not by one man but by many men
and not by one grape but by many plants:
it is not one drop but many rivers:
not one captain but many battles.
And they support you because you represent
the collective honor of our long struggle,
and if Cuba were to fall we would all fall,
and we would come to lift her,
and if she blooms with flowers
she will flourish with our won nectar.
And if they dare touch Cuba’s
forehead, by your hands liberated,
they will find people’s fists,
we will take out our buried weapons:
blood and pride will come to rescue,
to defend our beloved Cuba.




(Edited by Edward Penishands at 7:41 pm on April 5, 2003)

[Anonymous]

Standard Oil Co. (by Pablo Neruda, Canto General)



When the drill bored down

toward the stony fissures

and plunged its implacable intestine

into the subterranean estates,

and dead years, eyes

of the ages, imprisoned

plants’ roots

and scaly systems

became strata of water,

fire shot up through the tubes

transformed into cold liquid,

in the customs house of the heights,

issuing from its world of sinister depth,

it encountered a pale engineer

and a title deed.



However entangled the petroleum’s

arteries may be, however the layers

may change their silent site

and move their sovereignty

amid the earth’s bowels,

when the fountain gushes

its paraffin foliage,

Standard Oil arrived beforehand

with its checks and its guns,

with its governments and its prisoners.



Their obese emperors

from New York are suave

smiling assassins

who buy silk, nylon, cigars,

petty tyrants and dictators.



They buy countries, people, seas,

police, county councils,

distant regions where

the poor hoard their corn

like misers their gold:

Standard Oil awakens them,

clothes them in uniforms, designates

which brother is the enemy.

The Paraguayan fights its war,

And the Bolivian wastes away

in the jungle with its machine gun.



A President assassinated

for a drop of petroleum,

a million-acre

mortgage, a swift

execution on a morning

mortal with light, petrified,

a new prison camp for

subversives, in Patagonia,

a betrayal, scattered shots

beneath a petroliferous moon,

a subtle change of ministers

in the capital, a whisper

like an oil tide,

and zap, you’ll see

how Standard Oil’s letters

shine above the clouds,

above the seas, in your home,

illuminating their dominions.