​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 the Czech poet Jan Neruda. In 1971 Neruda won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Beasts

It was the nightfall of the iguana
from his rainbow-colored crest
his tongue like a dart
sank into the greenery
The monastic ant colony stepped
with musical feet through the jungle.
The wild llama, as delicate as oxygen
in the wide brown high country
went walking in his golden boots
while the tame llama opened
his candid eyes onto the daintiness
of a world filled with dew.
The monkeys braided
an endless erotic thread
along the shores of daybreak
bringing down walls of pollen
and frightening the violet flight
of butterflies on the river.
It was the night of the alligators
the pure, pulsing night
of snouts sticking out of slime
and from the drowsy swamps
the dull noise of scale armor
goes back to the origin of the earth.
The jaguar touched the leaves
with his glowing absence.
The puma runs through the thicket
like a devouring fire
while in him are burning
the alcoholic eyes of the jungle.
Badgers are scrabbling the banks
of the river, sniffing at a nest
full of living delicacies
which they will attack with red teeth.
And in the depth of the great water
like the circle of the earth
is the giant anaconda
covered with ceremonial paint,  devouring and religious.​

​I can write the saddest lines tonight.

Write for example: ‘The night is fractured
and they shiver, blue, those stars, in the distance’

The night wind turns in the sky and sings.
I can write the saddest lines tonight.
I loved her, sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like these I held her in my arms.
I kissed her greatly under the infinite sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could I not have loved her huge, still eyes.

I can write the saddest lines tonight.
To think I don’t have her, to feel I have lost her.

Hear the vast night, vaster without her.
Lines fall on the soul like dew on the grass.

What does it matter that I couldn’t keep her.
The night is fractured and she is not with me.

That is all. Someone sings far off. Far off,
my soul is not content to have lost her.

As though to reach her, my sight looks for her.
My heart looks for her: she is not with me

The same night whitens, in the same branches.
We, from that time, we are not the same.

I don’t love her, that’s certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the breeze to reach her.

Another’s kisses on her, like my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body, infinite eyes.

I don’t love her, that’s certain, but perhaps I love her.
Love is brief: forgetting lasts so long.

Since, on these nights, I held her in my arms,
my soul is not content to have lost her.

Though this is the last pain she will make me suffer,
and these are the last lines I will write for her.

You'll ask, Where are the lilacs?

And the philosophy dreamy with poppies?
And the rain which kept beating out
Your words, filling them
With water-specks and birds?

I’m going to tell you everything that happened to me.
I lived in a neighborhood
In Madrid with church bells
And clock towers and trees.

From there you could see
The dry face of Castille
Like a sea of leather
My house was called
The house with the flowers because around it
Geraniums exploded. It was
A beautiful house
With dogs and kids.

Raúl, do you remember?
Frederico, do you still remember
Under the ground?
Do you remember my house with the balconies
Where the June light soaked your mouth with
The taste of flowers?
Brother! Brother!
The market place of Arguelles, my neighborhood
With its statue like a pale inkwell among
The fish stalls.
It was all
Loud voices, salty commerce,
A deep rumble
Of feet and hands filled the streets,
Meters and liters,
The sharp essence of life,
Fish stacked up,
The texture of roofs in the cold sun in which
The weather-vane grows tired.
Fine, crazily carved ivory of potatoes
Lines of tomatoes to the sea.

Then one morning flames
Came out of the ground
Devouring human beings.
From then on fire,
Gunpowder from then on,
From then on blood.
Bandits with airplanes and Moorish troops
Bandits with gold rings and duchesses
Bandits with black monks giving their blessing
Came across the sky to kill children
And through the streets, the blood of children
Ran simply, like children’s blood does.

Jackals that a jackal would reject
Stones that a dry thistle would bite and spit out
Vipers that vipers would hate!

I have seen the blood
Of Spain rise up against you
To drown you in a single wave
Of pride and knives!

Generals
Traitors
Look at my dead home
Look at broken Spain ‘
But from each dead house
Burning metal shoots out
Instead of flowers.
From every shell-hole in Spain
Spain will rise.
From every dead child a rifle with
Eyes will rise.
From every crime bullets will be born
Which will one day find a place
In your hearts.

You ask Why doesn’t your poetry
Speak to us of dreams and leaves
Of the great volcanoes of your native land?

Come
See the blood along the streets
Come see
The blood along the streets
Come see the blood
Along the Streets!

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 loving 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.

Now 

Let’s look for birds!
The tall iron branches
in the forest,
The dense
fertility on the ground.
The world
is wet.
A dewdrop or raindrop
shines,
a diminutive star
among the leaves.
The morning time
mother earth
is cool.
The air
is like a river
which shakes
the silence.
It smells of rosemary,
of space
and roots.
Overhead,
a crazy song.
It’s a bird.
How
out of its throat
smaller than a finger
can there fall the waters
of its song?
Luminous ease!
Invisible
power
torrent
of music
in the leaves.
Sacred conversations!
Clean and fresh washed
is this
day resounding
like a green dulcimer.
I bury
my shoes
in the mud,
jump over rivulets.
A thorn
bites me and a gust
of air like a crystal
wave
splits up inside my chest.
Where
are the birds?
Maybe it was
that
rustling in the foliage
or that fleeting pellet
of brown velvet
or that displaced
perfume? That
leaf that let loose cinnamon smell
- was that a bird? That dust
from an irritated magnolia
or that fruit
which fell with a thump –
was that a flight?
Oh, invisible little
critters
birds of the devil
with their ringing
with their useless feathers.
I only want
to caress them,
to see them resplendent.
I don’t want
to see under glass
the embalmed lightning.
I want to see them living.
I want to touch their gloves
of real hide,
which they never forget in
the branches
and to converse with
them
sitting on my shoulders
although they may leave
me like certain statues
undeservedly whitewashed.
Impossible.
You can’t touch them.
You can hear them
like a heavenly
rustle or movement.
They converse
with precision.
They repeat
their observations.
They brag
of how much they do.
They comment
on everything that exists.
They learn
certain sciences
like hydrography.
and by a sure science
they know
where there are harvests
of grain.

Ode to my socks

Mara Mori brought me
a pair of socks
which she knitted herself
with her sheepherder's hands,
two socks as soft as rabbits.
I slipped my feet into them
as if they were two cases
knitted with threads of twilight and goatskin,
Violent socks,
my feet were two fish made of wool,
two long sharks
sea blue, shot through
by one golden thread,
two immense blackbirds,
two cannons,
my feet were honored in this way
by these heavenly socks.
They were so handsome for the first time
my feet seemed to me unacceptable
like two decrepit firemen,
firemen unworthy of that woven fire,
of those glowing socks.

Nevertheless, I resisted the sharp temptation
to save them somewhere as schoolboys
keep fireflies,
as learned men collect
sacred texts,
I resisted the mad impulse to put them
in a golden cage and each day give them
birdseed and pieces of pink melon.
Like explorers in the jungle
who hand over the very rare green deer
to the spit and eat it with remorse,
I stretched out my feet and pulled on
the magnificent socks and then my shoes.

The moral of my ode is this:
beauty is twice beauty
and what is good is doubly good
when it is a matter of two socks
made of wool in winter.

Ode to the seagull

To the seagull high above
the pinewoods of the coast,
on the wind the sibilant
syllable of my ode.

Sail,
bright boat, winged banner,
in my verse, stitch, body of silver,
your emblem across the shirt
of the icy firmament, oh, aviator,
gentle serenade of flight,
snow arrow, serene ship in the transparent storm,
steady, you soar while
the hoarse wind sweeps
the meadows of the sky.

After your long voyage,
feathered magnolia,
triangle borne aloft on the air,
slowly you regain your form,
arranging your silvery robes, shaping
your bright treasure in an oval, again a
white bud of flight,
a round seed,
egg of beauty.

Another poet would end here
his triumphant ode.
I cannot limit myself
to the luxurious whiteness
of useless froth.
Forgive me, seagull,
I am a realist poet,
photographer of the sky.
You eat, and eat, and eat,
there is nothing you don't devour,
on the waters of the bay you bark
like a beggar's dog, you pursue
the last scrap of fish gut,
you peck at your white sisters,
you steal your despicable prize,
a rotting clump of floating garbage,
decayed tomatoes, the discarded
rubbish of the cove.
But in you it is transformed
into clean wing, white geometry,
the ecstatic line of flight.
That is why snowy anchor,
aviator, I celebrate you as you are:
your insatiable voraciousness,
your screech in the rain,
or at rest a snowflake blown
from the storm, at peace or in flight,
seagull, I consecrate to you
my earthbound words,
my clumsy attempt at flight;
let's see whether you scatter
your birdseed in my ode.

Ode to time

In your age, growing.
In my age, going.
Time is decided, its bell does not ring;
it widens, walks within us,
appearing like deep water  in the gaze, and
next to the burnt  chestnuts of your eyes,
a breeze, the traces of a minuscule river,
a little, dry star ascending to your mouth.
Time rises: it threads into your hair,
but in my heart, your fragrance is a wilderness,
alive like the fire. It’s beautiful how what we live,
ages, by aging. Every day was a transparent rock,
every night was for us a black rose, and
this ditch on your face, or mine,
is a rock or flower, a memory of lightning.
My eyes have been worn in your beauty,
but you are my eyes.
I may have fatigued my kisses in your duplicate breasts,
but everyone has seen in my joy your secret shining.
Love, what matters that time, the same that rose like two flames,
or parallel thorns, may tomorrow sustain or undo
my body and your sweetness;
may those same invisible fingers erase the identity that divides us, and
give us victory in being  one sole being under this earth.

ode to tomatoes

The street filled with tomatoes,
midday, summer, light is
halved like a tomato,
its juice runs through the streets.
In December,  unabated,
the tomato invades the kitchen,
it enters at lunchtime, takes
its ease on countertops,
among glasses, butter dishes,
blue saltcellars. It sheds
its own light, benign majesty.
Unfortunately, we must murder it:
the knife sinks into living flesh,
red viscera a cool sun,
profound, inexhaustible,
populates the salads of Chile,
happily, it is wed to the clear onion,
and to celebrate the union we
pour oil, essential child of the olive,
onto its halved hemispheres,
pepper adds its fragrance,
salt, its magnetism;
it is the wedding of the day,
parsley hoists its flag,
potatoes bubble vigorously,
the aroma of the roast knocks
at the door, it's time!
come on! and, on the table, at the midpoint
of summer, the tomato,
star of earth, recurrent and fertile
star, displays its convolutions,
its canals, its remarkable amplitude
and abundance, no pit,
no husk, no leaves or thorns,
the tomato offers its gift
of fiery color and cool completeness.

​When I close a book

I open life.
I hear
faltering cries
among harbours.
Copper ignots
slide down sand-pits
to Tocopilla.
Night time.
Among the islands
our ocean
throbs with fish,
touches the feet, the thighs,
the chalk ribs
of my country.
The whole of night
clings to its shores, by dawn
it wakes up singing
as if it had excited a guitar.

The ocean’s surge is calling.
The wind
calls me
and Rodriguez calls,
and Jose Antonio–
I got a telegram
from the “Mine” Union
and the one I love
(whose name I won’t let out)
expects me in Bucalemu.

No book has been able
to wrap me in paper,
to fill me up
with typography,
with heavenly imprints
or was ever able
to bind my eyes,
I come out of books to people orchards
with the hoarse family of my song,
to work the burning metals
or to eat smoked beef
by mountain firesides.
I love adventurous
books,
books of forest or snow,
depth or sky
but hate
the spider book
in which thought
has laid poisonous wires
to trap the juvenile
and circling fly.
Book, let me go.
I won’t go clothed
in volumes,
I don’t come out
of collected works,
my poems
have not eaten poems–
they devour
exciting happenings,
feed on rough weather,
and dig their food
out of earth and men.
I’m on my way
with dust in my shoes
free of mythology:
send books back to their shelves,
I’m going down into the streets.
I learned about life
from life itself,
love I learned in a single kiss
and could teach no one anything
except that I have lived
with something in common among men,
when fighting with them,
when saying all their say in my song.

​From those lemon flowers 

Set free
By the light of the moon
From that
Odor of a love
Frustrated,
Sunken in fragrance,
There came
From the Lemon tree its yellow,
From its planetary system
The lemons came down to the earth.

Tender merchandise!
Our shores filled up with it,
The markets
Of light, of gold
From a tree,
And we open up
The two halves
Of a miracle,
Congealed acid
Which ran
From the hemispheres
Of a star
And the most profound liquor
In nature,
Unchanging, alive,
Indestructible,
Born from the freshness
Of the lemon,
From its fragrant house,
From its acid, secret symmetry.

Inside the lemon the knives
Cut
A small
Cathedral,
The window hidden behind the altars
Opened to the light its glassy acids,
And in drops
Like topazes they were dripped
Onto the altars
By the architecture of freshness.

So when your hand
Squeezes the hemisphere
Of the cut
Lemon onto your plate,
A universe of gold,
You have poured out
One
Yellow cup
Full of miracles
One of the sweet-smelling nipples
Of the breast of the earth,
A ray of light that became a fruit,
The diminutive fire of a planet

​Starting at Singapore it smelled of opium 

The good Englishman knew what he was doing
At world conferences he thundered
Against the secret drug-lords
And in his colonies every port
sent up a cloud of authorized smoke
with an official number and a juicy franchise.
The official gentleman in London
dressed like a spotless nightingale
(with striped pants and a shirt starched into armor)
A nightingale trilling against the pusher
in the shadows.
But here in the Orient
the gentleman unmasked himself
and sold lethargy on every corner.

​And it was at that age…Poetry arrived

in search of me. I don’t know, I don’t know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don’t know how or when,
no, they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
I felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke free on the open sky.

​The pigeons visited Pushkin 

And pecked at his melancholy
The gray bronze statue talks to the pigeons
With all the patience of bronze.

The modern pigeons
Don’t understand him
The language of birds now
Is different.
They make droppings on Pushkin
Then fly to Mayakovsky.
His statue seems to be of lead.
He seems to have been
Made of bullets.
They didn’t sculpt his tenderness –
Just his beautiful arrogance.
If he is a wrecker
Of tender things
How can he live among violets
In the moonlight
In love?

Something is always missing in these statues
Which are fixed rigidly in the direction of their times.
Either they are slashed
Into the air with a combat knife
Or they are left seated
Transformed into a tourist in a garden.
And other people, tired of riding horseback
No longer can dismount and eat there.
Statues are really bitter things
Because time piles up
In deposits on them, oxidizing them
And even the flowers come to cover
Their cold feet. The flowers aren’t kisses.
They’ve also come there to die.

White birds in the daytime
And poets at night
And a great ring of shoes surrounding
The iron Mayakovosky
And his frightful bronze jacket
And his iron unsmiling mouth.

One time when it was late and I was almost asleep
On the edge of the river, far off in the city
I could hear the verses rising, the psalms
Of the reciters in succession.
Was Mayakovsky listening?
Do statues listen?

​Tie your heart at night to mine, love,

and both will defeat the darkness
like twin drums beating in the forest
against the heavy wall of wet leaves.

Night crossing: black coal of dream
that cuts the thread of earthly orbs
with the punctuality of a headlong train
that pulls cold stone and shadow endlessly.

Love, because of it, tie me to a purer movement,
to the grip on life that beats in your breast,
with the wings of a submerged swan,

So that our dream might reply
to the sky’s questioning stars
with one key, one door closed to shadow.

​Three triangles of birds crossed 

Over the enormous ocean which extended
In winter like a green beast.
Everything just lay there, the silence,
The unfolding gray, the heavy light
Of space, some land now and then.
Over everything there was passing
A flight
And another flight
Of dark birds, winter bodies
Trembling triangles
Whose wings,
Frantically flapping, hardly
Can carry the gray cold, the desolate days
From one place to another
Along the coast of Chile.

I am here while from one sky to another
The trembling of the migratory birds
Leaves me sunk inside myself, inside my own matter
Like an everlasting well
Dug by an immovable spiral.
Now they have disappeared
Black feathers of the sea
Iron birds
From steep slopes and rock piles
Now at noon
I am in front of emptiness. It’s a winter
Space stretched out
And the sea has put
Over its blue face
A bitter mask.