Just thought I'd share this poem with you

[Adi Shankara]

By Communist writer/poet Pablo Neruda; it's a love sonnet, but it's beautiful, so here it is:

Hemos perdido aun este crepúsculo.
Nadie nos vio esta tarde con las manos unidas
mientras la noche azul caía sobre el mundo.

He visto desde mi ventana
la fiesta del poniente en los cerros lejanos.

A veces como una moneda
se encendía un pedazo de sol entre mis manos.

Yo te recordaba con el alma apretada
de esa tristeza que tú me conoces.

Entonces, dónde estabas?
Entre qué gentes?
Diciendo qué palabras?
Por qué se me vendrá todo el amor de golpe
cuando me siento triste, y te siento lejana?

Cayó el libro que siempre se toma en el crepúsculo,
y como un perro herido rodó a mis pies mi capa.

Siempre, siempre te alejas en las tardes
hacia donde el crepúsculo corre borrando estatuas.

[Rakhmetov]

Between what I see and what I say

(Octavio Paz, Nobel Laureate)


Between what I see and what I say
Between what I say and what I keep silent
Between what I keep silent and what I dream
Between what I dream and what I forget:
poetry.

It slips
between yes and no,

says
what I keep silent,

keeps silent
what I say,

dreams
what I forget.

It is not speech:
it is an act.

It is an act
of speech.

Poetry
speaks and listens:

it is real.
And as soon as I say

it is real,
it vanishes.

Is it then more real?
Tangible idea,

Intangible
word:

poetry
comes and goes.

Between what is
And what is not.

It weaves
And unweaves reflections.

Poetry
Scatters eyes on a page,
Scatters words on our eyes.
Eyes speak,

Words look,
Looks think.

To hear
Thoughts,

See
What we say,

Touch
The body of an idea.

Eyes close,
The words open.

[Rakhmetov]

http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/sandino/augusto-sandino-1.jpg (http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/sandino/augusto-sandino-1.jpg)

Sandino

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 sysyems,
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.


http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/sandino.htm