Aku letak sajak-sajak Pablo Neruda di sini setelah berusaha pilih video-video terbaik yang bersesuaian dengan budaya negara ini. Karyanya jelas berupa cinta sesama manusia tapi terselit juga mengenai kasih kepada tanah airnya yang amat mendalam. Dia seorang berfahaman komunis dan pernah dibuang negara tapi aku hayati tulisan beliau bukan kerana ideologi. Lebih kepada untuk belajar tentang sastera. Tak lebih daripada ini. Nanti, aku terjemah ke Bahasa Melayu beberapa sajak Neruda berasaskan kepada kefahaman aku sendiri. Aku tahu ada pembaca di sini yang amat minat sajak dan mungkin tak mahir Bahasa Inggeris. Aku pun, bukannya bagus amat! ❤❤❤ 

I Like When You Are Quiet

I like when you are quiet because it is as though you are absent, and you hear me from far away, and my voice does not touch you. It looks as though your eyes had flown away and it looks as if a kiss had sealed your mouth.

Aku suka kamu diam bagai kamu tiada di sisiku,

dan kamu pula dengar suaraku dari kejauhan, dan suaraku tak menyentuhmu.

Kelihatan matamu bagai terbang jauh

dan bibirmu bagai dipalam sebuah ciuman. Like all things are full of my soul You emerge from the things, full of my soul. Dream butterfly, you seem like my soul, and you seem like the word melancholy.

Bagai segala benda berkumpul dalam jiwaku. Kamu muncul di celah benda-benda itu, mengisi penuh jiwaku. Rama-rama impian, kamu seolah-olah jiwaku, dan kamu seolah-olah perkataan melankoli.

[nota aku: Rama-rama menggambarkan suatu perubahan dalam diri seseorang, manakala melankoli ialah perbuatan termenung berduka cita.] I like you when you are quiet and it is as though you are distant. It is as though you are lamenting, butterfly in lullaby. And you hear me from far away, and my voice does not reach you: let me fall quiet with your own silence.

Aku suka kamu diam dan kamu bagai berada nun jauh. Kelihatan kamu meratap, rama-rama dalam lagu dodoi. Dan kamu dengar suaraku dari kejauhan, dan suaraku gagal menggapai kamu: biarlah aku diam bersama-sama kesenyapanmu. Let me also speak to you with your silence Clear like a lamp, simple like a ring. You are like the night, quiet and full of stars. Your silence is of a star, so far away and simple.

Biar aku turut berkata kepadamu dengan kesenyapanmu. Jelas seperti lampu, sederhana seperti cincin. Kamu seperti malam, sunyi dan dipagar bintang-bintang. Kesenyapanmu adalah sebutir bintang, jaraknya jauh dan sederhana. I like you when you are quiet because it is as though you are absent. Distant and full of sorrow as if you had died. A word then, a smile is enough. And I am happy, happy that it is not true.

Aku suka kamu diam bagai kamu tiada di sisiku. Berjauhan dan penuh dukacita bagai kamu sudah mati. Sepatah perkataan, sebuah senyuman sudah cukup. Dan aku bakal gembira, gembira yang bukannya benar.

Your Laughter

Take bread away from me, if you wish,
take air away, but
do not take from me your laughter.

Ambil roti ini dariku, jika kamu mahu,
ambil udara juga, tapi
jangan ambil dariku tawamu.

Do not take away the rose,
the lance flower that you pluck,
the water that suddenly
bursts forth in joy,
the sudden wave
of silver born in you.

Jangan ambil mawar itu,
tangkai berduri kamu sendiri petik,
air yang tiba-tiba
bersorak gembira,
ombak perak yang tiba-tiba
lahir dalam dirimu.

My struggle is harsh and I come back
with eyes tired
at times from having seen
the unchanging earth,
but when your laughter enters
it rises to the sky seeking me
and it opens for me all
the doors of life.

Perjuanganku sukar dan aku pulang
dengan mata penat
ada kalanya akibat menyaksikan
bumi yang tidak berubah,
tapi ketika tawamu muncul,
ia bangkit ke langit mencariku
dan ia buka untukku semua
pintu kehidupan.

My love, in the darkest
hour your laughter
opens, and if suddenly
you see my blood staining
the stones of the street,
laugh, because your laughter
will be for my hands
like a fresh sword.

Sayangku, dalam gelap gelita

tawamu

menyerlahkan, dan jika tiba-tiba
kau lihat darahku mengotori

batu-batu di jalanan,
ketawalah, sebab tawamu
akan rebah ke tanganku

bagai sebilah pedang baru.

[nota aku: Menyerlah = Kelihatan nyata kerana tak dilindungi apa-apa, berseri bagi wajah perempuan atau bulan, atau seseorang yang terkemuka atau menonjol dalam bidang tertentu. Menyerlahkan = Menjadikan menyerlah atau menjadikan terserlah, membuatkan sesuatu terang bercahaya, mengemukakan atau menonjolkan sesuatu perkara.]

Next to the sea in the autumn,
your laughter must raise
its foamy cascade,
and in the spring, love,
I want your laughter like
the flower I was waiting for,
the blue flower, the rose
of my echoing country.

Di tepi laut di musim gugur,
tawamu memunculkan

pancuran buih,
dan di musim bunga, sayangku,
aku ingin tawamu seperti
sekuntum bunga yang aku nantikan,
bunga biru,

mawar negaraku yang bergema.

Laugh at the night,
at the day, at the moon,
laugh at the twisted
streets of the island,
laugh at this clumsy
boy who loves you,
but when I open
my eyes and close them,
when my steps go,
when my steps return,
deny me bread, air,
light, spring,
but never your laughter
for I would die.

Ketawakan malam hari,
kepada siang, kepada bulan,
ketawakan lorong-lorong

berkelok di pulau itu,
ketawakan budak lelaki 

cemerkap yang mencintaimu,

tapi tika aku buka
mataku dan menutupnya,
tika langkah-langkahku pergi,
tika langkah-langkahku kembali,
nafikan hak aku memiliki roti, udara,
cahaya, musim bunga,
tapi bukan tawamu
kerana aku akan mati tanpanya.

Tonight I Can Write The Saddest Lines

Tonight I can write the saddest lines. Write, for example, 'The night is starry and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.' The night wind revolves in the sky and sings. Tonight I can write the saddest lines. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Malam ini aku mampu tulis ayat-ayat paling sedih.

Tulis, sebagai contoh, ‘Malam ini penuh bintang dan bintang-bintangnya biru serta menggigil di kejauhan.’

Angin malam ini berputar-putar di angkasa sambil bernyanyi.

Malam ini aku mampu tulis ayat-ayat paling sedih.

Aku pernah sayang dia, dan kadang kala dia juga pernah sayang aku.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.

I kissed her again and again under the endless sky. She loved me, sometimes I loved her too. How could one not have loved her great still eyes. Tonight I can write the saddest lines. To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her. To hear the immense night, still more immense without her. And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

Sepanjang malam-malam seperti malam ini aku pernah memeluknya.

Aku pernah cium dia berkali-kali di bawah langit tanpa penghujung.

Dia pernah menyayangi aku, kadang kala aku juga pernah menyayangi dia.

Bagaimana mungkin seseorang tak mengkagumi matanya yang tenang.

Malam ini aku mampu tulis ayat-ayat paling sedih.

Demi memikir aku tak memilikinya. Berasa aku kehilangannya.

Aku pasang telinga di malam yang luas, namun malam lebih luas tanpa dia.

Dan bait puisi rebah ke jiwa bagai embun di padang rumput. 

What does it matter that my love could not keep her. The night is starry and she is not with me. This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance. My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Tak ada bezanya lagi kerana kasihku tak mampu mengekalkannya di sisiku. 

Malam ini berbintang dan dia tak bersamaku.

Setakat ini sahaja. Di kejauhan seseorang sedang bernyanyi. Di kejauhan.

Jiwaku tak puas kerana kehilangan dia.

My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.

My heart looks for her, and she is not with me. The same night whitening the same trees. We, of that time, are no longer the same.

Pandanganku cuba mencari dia seakan-akan untuk membawa dia ke sisiku.

Hatiku mencari dia, dan dia tiada bersamaku.

Malam ini bagai malam yang sama memutihkan pokok-pokok yang sama. 

Kami, melalui zaman dahulu, kini kami tak sama lagi. 

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her. My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing. Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses. Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes. I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her. Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Aku tak lagi menyayangi dia, itu pasti, tapi begitupun dulu aku amat menyayangi dia. 

Suaraku cuba mengguna angin untuk menyentuh pendengarannya.

Milik orang. Dia bakal menjadi milik orang lain. Sebagaimana waktu sebelum ciumanku bermula.

Suaranya, tubuh mongelnya. Jangkauan matanya.

Aku tak menyayangi dia lagi, itu pasti, tapi mungkin aku masih menyayangi dia.

Cinta amat sekejap, memusnahkan kenangan ambil masa amat lama.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her. Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer and these the last verses that I write for her.

Kerana sepanjang malam-malam seperti malam ini aku pernah memeluknya

jiwaku tak puas kerana kehilangannya.

Meskipun malam ini adalah kesakitan terakhir dia rancang supaya aku sengsara

dan inilah bait-bait puisi yang terakhir aku tulis untuknya.

In My Sky At Twilight

In my sky at twilight you are like a cloud and your form and colour are the way I love them. You are mine, mine, woman with sweet lips and in your life my infinite dreams live.

Di langitku kala senja kamu bagai awan dan bentuk dan warna kamu seperti yang aku suka.

Kamu milikku, milikku, perempuan berbibir manis

dan dalam kehidupanmu mimpi-mimpi tak kesudahanku memekar.

The lamp of my soul dyes your feet, the sour wine is sweeter on your lips, oh reaper of my evening song, how solitary dreams believe you to be mine!

Lampu jiwaku mewarnakan kedua-dua kakimu,

wain masam lebih manis tatkala di bibirmu,

ah penuai senandung senjaku,

betapa mimpi-mimpi sendirian yakin kamu bakal milikku!

You are mine, mine, I go shouting it to the afternoon's wind, and the wind hauls on my widowed voice. Huntress of the depth of my eyes, your plunder stills your nocturnal regard as though it were water.

Kamu milikku, milikku, aku menjerit-jerit kepada angin

tengahari, dan angin itu menghela suara dudaku.

Perempuan pemburu kedalaman kedua-dua mataku, jarahanmu

kaku renungan malammu bagaikan air.

You are taken in the net of my music, my love, and my nets of music are wide as the sky. My soul is born on the shore of your eyes of mourning. In your eyes of mourning the land of dreams begin.

Kamu terjerat dalam jaringan muzikku, sayangku,

dan jaring-jaring muzikku luas umpama angkasa.

Jiwaku lahir di pantai kesedihan kedua-dua matamu.

Dalam perkabungan kedua-dua matamu daratan impian bermula.

Don't Go Far Off

Don't go far off, not even for a day, because --
because -- I don't know how to say it: a day is long
and I will be waiting for you, as in an empty station
when the trains are parked off somewhere else, asleep.

Jangan pergi jauh, walau sehari, kerana --

kerana – aku tak tahu cara untuk ucapkannya: satu hari itu lama

dan aku akan menanti kamu, seperti di stesen sepi

ketika keretapi-keretapi diparkir di tempat lain, nyenyak tidur.

Don't leave me, even for an hour, because
then the little drops of anguish will all run together,
the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift
into me, choking my lost heart.

Jangan tinggalkan aku, walau sejam, kerana

nanti tetes-tetes kecil penderitaan akan berbaur,

asap yang berkeliaran mencari rumah akan melayang

ke dalam tubuhku, mencekik hatiku yang kehilangan semangat.

Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve on the beach;

may your eyelids never flutter into the empty distance.
Don't leave me for a second, my dearest,

Oh, moga bayangmu tak larut di pantai;

moga kelopak-kelopak matamu tak buka tutup merenung di kejauhan yang kosong.

Jangan tinggalkan aku sesaat, sayangku,

because in that moment you'll have gone so far
I'll wander mazily over all the earth, asking,
Will you come back? Will you leave me here, dying?

kerana ketika tempoh itu kau mungkin sudah pergi terlalu jauh

aku akan mengembara dalam kekeliruan ke seluruh pelosok permukaan bumi, bertanya,

Adakah kamu akan kembali? Adakah kamu akan tinggalkan aku di sini, menunggu mati?

And Now You're Mine

And now you're mine. Rest with your dream in my dream. Love and pain and work should all sleep, now. The night turns on its invisible wheels, and you are pure beside me as a sleeping amber.

Dan sekarang kamu milikku. Rehatlah bersama mimpimu di dalam mimpiku.

Cinta dan sakit dan tugas semuanya perlu beradu, sekarang.

Malam memutarkan roda-roda halimunannya,

dan kamu tulen di sebelah aku bak ambar nyenyak tidur.

No one else, Love, will sleep in my dreams. You will go, we will go together, over the waters of time. No one else will travel through the shadows with me, only you, evergreen, ever sun, ever moon.

Tiada orang lain, Sayang, akan tidur di dalam mimpi-mimpiku. Kau akan pergi,

kita akan pergi bersama, mengatasi had masa.

Tiada orang lain bakal mengembara menembusi bayang-bayang bersamaku,

Hanya kamu, tetap mekar, bagai mentari, bagai bulan.

Your hands have already opened their delicate fists and let their soft drifting signs drop away; your eyes closed like two gray wings, and I move

Kedua-dua tanganmu sudah membuka genggaman halusnya

Dan biarlah tanda-tanda lembutnya beransur pergi, kedua-dua matamu tertutup umpama

dua kepak kelabu, dan aku meminggir

after, following the folding water you carry, that carries me away. The night, the world, the wind spin out their destiny. Without you, I am your dream, only that, and that is all.

akhirnya, seusai lipatan air yang kamu jinjing, turut membawa

aku pergi. Malam, dunia, angin berputar mengikut takdir.

Tanpa kamu, aku hanyalah mimpi kamu, tiada lain, dan itulah sahaja.

[nota aku: Sajak di atas ini difahamkan ditulis Neruda buat isterinya, Matilde Urritia.]

When I Die

When I die I want your hands on my eyes: I want the light and the wheat of your beloved hands to pass their freshness over me one more time to feel the smoothness that changed my destiny.

Bila aku mati aku mahu kedua-dua tanganmu diletak atas kedua-dua mataku:

Aku mahu cahaya dan sinaran dari kedua-dua tanganmu yang dikasihi

salur kesegaran ke seluruh tubuhku sekali lagi

rasa kelicinan perubahan takdirku.

I want you to live while I wait for you, asleep, I want for your ears to go on hearing the wind, for you to smell the sea that we loved together and for you to go on walking the sand where we walked.

Aku mahu kamu hidup di kala aku menanti kamu, tidur nyenyak,

aku mahu telingamu terus mendengar desiran angin,

kamu hidu lautan yang kita sama-sama sayangi

dan kamu tetap menginjak pasir yang kita pernah jejak.

I want for what I love to go on living and as for you I loved you and sang you above everything, for that, go on flowering, flowery one,

Aku mahu setiap yang aku suka terus hidup

dan untukmu aku dulu menyayangi kamu dan sudah aku senandungkan kamu melebihi segala,

demi ini, cambahkan bunga lagi, berjenis-jenis bunga,

so that you reach all that my love orders for you, so that my shadow passes through your hair, so that they know by this the reason for my song.

dengan ini kamu berjaya capai semua arahan cinta aku kepadamu,

dengan ini bayangku melintas di celah rambutmu,

dengan ini mereka faham alasan aku bernyanyi.

I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You

I do not love you except because I love you;
I go from loving to not loving you,
From waiting to not waiting for you
My heart moves from cold to fire. 

Aku tidak mencintaimu kecuali kerana aku mencintaimu;
Aku bermula dari mencintai untuk tidak mencintaimu,
Dari menunggu untuk tidak menunggumu
Hatiku berubah dari dingin ke panas membara.

I love you only because it's you the one I love;
I hate you deeply, and hating you
Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you
Is that I do not see you but love you blindly.

Aku mencintaimu hanya kerana kamulah yang aku cintai;
Aku membencimu, dan terus membencimu amat dalam
Menekuk kepadamu, lalu ukuran cintaku berubah untuk kamu
Adalah aku tidak mengamatimu tapi mencintaimu membuta tuli.

Maybe January light will consume
My heart with its cruel
Ray, stealing my key to true calm.

Mungkin mentari Januari akan melahap
Hatiku dengan sinaran

Kejamnya, mencuri kunci ketenangan sejatiku.

In this part of the story I am the one who
Dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,
Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood.

Pada bahagian kisah ini akulah yang
Mati, satu-satunya, dan aku akan mati karena cinta kerana aku mencintaimu,
Kerana aku mencintaimu, Sayang, dalam api dan dalam darah.

Aku ingin kau tahu

satu perkara.

Kau faham mengenai hal ini:

Jika aku lihat

bulan kristal, juga dahan merah

di musim gugur yang lambat geraknya di jendelaku,

jika aku sentuh

dekat api

abu yang tak dapat dipegang

atau kedutan di batang kayu,

semuanya membawa aku kepadamu,

seolah-olah segala yang ada,

aroma, cahaya, logam,

adalah perahu kecil

yang belayar

menuju pulau-pulau kecil kau yang sedang menunggu aku.

Baiklah, kini,

jika sedikit demi sedikit kau berhenti mencintaiku,

aku akan berhenti mencintaimu sedikit demi sedikit.

Jika tiba-tiba

kau melupakan aku

jangan cari aku,

kerana aku sudah melupakan kau.

Jika kau fikir panjang dan dengan marah

angin panji-panji

yang melewati hidupku,

dan kau putuskan

tinggalkan aku di tebing laut

di mana hati aku memiliki akar-akar,

ingat

bahawa pada hari itu,

pada jam itu,

aku akan angkat kedua-dua lenganku

dan akar-akar aku akan mulakan perjalanan

untuk mencari tanah lain.

Tapi

jika setiap hari,

setiap jam,

kau rasa kau ditakdirkan untuk aku

dengan kemanisan tak tertahan,

jika setiap hari sekuntum bunga

panjat ke bibir kau untuk mencari aku,

ah! cintaku, ah! milikku,

dalam diri aku, semua api itu berulang,

tiada dalam diri aku

yang padam atau dilupakan,

cinta aku memakan cinta kau, kekasih,

dan sepanjang hidup kau

ia akan berada di lengan kau

tanpa meninggalkan lengan aku.

Sekarang kita kira sampai 12

dan kita akan duk diam

untuk sekali ni saja di atas muka bumi

toksah cakap dalam bahasa apa pun;

berhenti sesaat,

dan elak gerak lengan kita keterlaluan.

Suasana akan jadi luar biasa

tanpa kalut, tanpa jentera-jentera

kita akan berkumpul bersama

dalam suasana pelik secara tiba-tiba.

Para nelayan di lautan sejuk

takkan sakiti ikan-ikan paus

dan lelaki pengumpul garam

takkan lihat tangan-tangannya yang sakit.

Mereka yang bersiap untuk perang hijau,

perang dengan gas, perang dengan api,

menang tanpa mangsa yang selamat,

akan pakai pakaian bersih

dan berjalan-jalan bersama rakan-rakan

di bawah teduhan, tak buat apa-apa.

Apa yang aku mahu ni jangan disalah erti

dengan tak dak langsung aktiviti.

Hidup adalah mengenai hidup itu sendiri;

aku ingin tak dak trak sarat kematian.

Jika kita tak hanya tumpu satu arah

dalam mengharungi hidup kita.

dan untuk sekali saja mampu duk diam,

mungkin kesepian yang amat sangat

bakal ganggu kesedihan

berkaitan kita gagal faham diri sendiri

yang ancam kita dengan kematian.

Mungkin bumi boleh ajar kita

apabila tatkala semua makhluk nampak mati

namun kemudiannya terbukti cergas.

Sekarang aku sendiri akan kira sampai 12

dan korang duk diam dan aku akan pergi.

[nota aku: Pablo Neruda suruh kita dengan dia kira sampai 12. Nombor ni bermaksud 12 jam sehari atau 12 bulan setahun. Ia gambarkan yang kita sentiasa kalut kejar masa, lalu dia suruh kita duk diam. Dia suruh kita jangan cakap apa bahasa pun untuk elak berlaku perpecahan. Dia suruh jangan gerak lengan bermakna jangan berkelakuan ganas atau tamak. Dia kemudiannya bayangkan suasana bakal jadi luar biasa jika kita duk diam. Nelayan sakiti paus dan lelaki kumpul garam adalah suatu peringatan supaya kita muhasabah diri sendiri. Dia jelaskan, perang tiada pemenang lantas galak tukar kepada pakaian bersih yang bermaksud buat tugas demi keamanan dunia. Namun, dia jelaskan juga bahawa duk diam bukan bermakna tak buat apa-apa langsung atau sekadar tunggu mati. Dia gambarkan ini dengan bumi yang kelihatan kaku dari jauh tapi subur dengan segala macam tumbuhan dan haiwan apabila dilihat lebih dekat. Akhir sekali, dia kata dia seorang diri akan kira sampai 12, tapi kita duk diam yakni terus membuat penilaian terhadap baik atau buruk diri masing-masing. Dia pula akan pergi yang bermaksud dia secara peribadi nak muhasabah dirinya sendiri seiring meninjau kembali kisah lampaunya.]

Here I Love You

Here I love you.

In the dark pines the wind disentangles itself.

The moon glows like phosphorous on the vagrant waters.

Days, all one kind, go chasing each other.

Di sini aku mencintaimu.

Di dalam kelebatan hutan pinus angin terlerai sendirian.
Bulan bersinar seperti fosforus di perairan yang mengembara.
Hari-hari, semua makhluk, saling berkejaran.

The snow unfurls in dancing figures.

A silver gull slips down from the west.

Sometimes a sail. High, high stars.

Oh the black cross of a ship.

Alone.

Salji terbongkar dalam bentuk-bentuk tarian.

Seekor camar perak menjunam dari arah barat.
Kadang-kadang sebual kapal layar. Tinggi, bintang-bintang yang tinggi.

Oh pangkah hitam sebuah kapal.
Sendirian.

Sometimes I get up early and even my soul is wet.

Far away the sea sounds and resounds.

This is a port.

Terkadang aku bangun pagi dan jiwaku basah.

Jauh nun di sana laut berbunyi dan bergema.
Ini pelabuhan.

Here I love you.

Here I love you and the horizon hides you in vain.

I love you still among these cold things.

Sometimes my kisses go on those heavy vessels

that cross the sea towards no arrival.

I see myself forgotten like those old anchors.

Di sini aku mencintaimu.

Di sini aku mencintaimu dan sia-sia kaki langit sembunyikan kamu.
Aku masih mencintaimu antara semua benda yang dingin ini.
Terkadang ciuman-ciumanku pergi bersama-sama kapal-kapal besar
menyeberang lautan tanpa tiba ke tempat tujuan.
Aku lihat diriku dilupakan bagaikan sauh-sauh usang itu.

The piers sadden when the afternoon moors there.

My life grows tired, hungry to no purpose.

I love what I do not have. You are so far.

My loathing wrestles with the slow twilights.

But night comes and starts to sing to me.

Dermaga-dermaga bersedih ketika senja berlabuh di sana.

Hidupku kian lelah, lapar tanpa sebab.
Aku menyayangi apa yang bukan milikku. Kamu berada terlalu jauh.
Kebencianku bertarung dengan senja-senja yang bergerak perlahan.
Tapi malam menjelma lalu bersenandung untukku.

The moon turns its clockwork dream.

The biggest stars look at me with your eyes.

And as I love you, the pines in the wind

want to sing your name with their leaves of wire.

Bulan memutarkan mimpi hariannya.

Bintang-bintang paling besar melihat aku dengan kedua-dua matamu.
Dan seiring aku mencintaimu, pokok-pokok pinus yang diterjah angin
ingin menyanyikan namamu dengan daun-daunnya yang bertautan.

I Love You

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

Aku bukan sayang kamu seolah-olah kamu garam mawar, atau topaz,

atau anak panah api bunga anyelir.

Aku sayang kamu seperti benda-benda gelap yang sepatutnya disayangi,

secara rahsia, antara bayangan dan jiwa.

[nota aku: Rose salt ialah garam kasar berperisa kelopak mawar; manakala topaz ialah batu cantik biru, kuning atau tanpa warna. Anyelir atau teluki adalah nama Bahasa Melayu bagi carnation.]

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

Aku sayang kamu bagaikan tumbuhan yang belum mekar

tapi ia mengheret dalam dirinya sendiri cahaya dari bunga-bunga yang terlindung;

terima kasih di atas kepastian kasih sayang wangian padumu,

bangkit dari bumi, bernyawa gelap dalam tubuhku.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

Aku sayang kamu tanpa aku tahu bagaimana, atau bila, atau dari mana.

Aku sayang kamu berterus terang, tanpa kerumitan-kerumitan atau harga diri;

oleh itu aku sayang kamu kerana aku tahu tiada cara lain

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

melainkan ini: di mana aku tak wujud, begitu jua kamu,

amat hampir sehingga tanganmu yang berada di dadaku ialah tangan aku,

amat hampir sehingga kedua matamu tertutup sewaktu aku nyenyak tidur.

Leaning Into The Afternoons

Leaning into the afternoons, I cast my sad nets towards your oceanic eyes. There, in the highest blaze my solitude lengthens and flames; Its arms turning like a drowning man's. I send out red signals across your absent eyes That wave like the sea, or the beach by a lighthouse. You keep only darkness my distant female; From your regard sometimes, the coast of dread emerges. Leaning into the afternoons, I fling my sad nets to that sea that is thrashed By your oceanic eyes. The birds of night peck at the first stars That flash like my soul when I love you. The night, gallops on its shadowy mare Shedding blue tassels over the land.

Clenched Soul

We have lost even this twilight. No one saw us this evening hand in hand while the blue night dropped on the world.

Kita malah kehilangan senja ini.
Tak siapa lihat kita berjalan berpimpin tangan
sewaktu malam biru gugur ke dunia. I have seen from my window the fiesta of sunset in the distant mountain tops.

Aku sudah lihat dari tingkapku
pesta mentari terbenam di puncak-puncak gunung di kejauhan. Sometimes a piece of sun burned like a coin in my hand.

Terkadang secebis mentari
terbakar bak sekeping syiling dalam genggamanku.

I remembered you with my soul clenched in that sadness of mine that you know.

Aku mengingati kamu dengan jiwaku terbelenggu
dalam kesedihanku yang kamu sudah tahu.

Where were you then? Who else was there? Saying what? Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly when I am sad and feel you are far away?

Di mana kamu di masa itu?
Siapa lagi yang berada di sana?
Apa jawaban kamu?
Kenapa seluruh rasa sayang menghampiriku secara tiba-tiba
di kala aku bersedih dan berasa kamu berada nun jauh? The book fell that always closed at twilight and my blue sweater rolled like a hurt dog at my feet.

Buku itu terjatuh yang kebiasaannya ditutup menjelang senja
dan baju sejukku tergulung bagai seekor anjing luka di kedua-dua kakiku.

[nota aku: Berdasarkan cara percakapan kebanyakan orang awam di Malaysia, sweater diistilah sebagai baju sejuk walaupun pakaian ini sepatutnya disebut baju panas. Aku pula suka menulis berasas kepada realisme. Oleh itu, aku pilih baju sejuk!]

Always, always you recede through the evenings toward the twilight erasing statues.

Selalu, sering sahaja kau mengundur diri tatkala senja-senja melabuh tirainya

mengikut senja pergi memadamkan patung-patung.

And Because Love Battles

And because love battles
not only in its burning agricultures
but also in the mouth of men and women,
I will finish off by taking the path away
to those who between my chest and your fragrance
want to interpose their obscure plant.

About me, nothing worse
they will tell you, my love,
than what I told you.

I lived in the prairies
before I got to know you
and I did not wait love but I was
laying in wait for and I jumped on the rose.

What more can they tell you?
I am neither good nor bad but a man,
and they will then associate the danger
of my life, which you know
and which with your passion you shared.

And good, this danger
is danger of love, of complete love
for all life,
for all lives,
and if this love brings us
the death and the prisons,
I am sure that your big eyes,
as when I kiss them,
will then close with pride,
into double pride, love,
with your pride and my pride.

But to my ears they will come before
to wear down the tour
of the sweet and hard love which binds us,
and they will say: “The one
you love,
is not a woman for you,
Why do you love her? I think
you could find one more beautiful,
more serious, more deep,
more other, you understand me, look how she’s light,
and what a head she has,
and look at how she dresses,
and etcetera and etcetera”.

And I in these lines say:
Like this I want you, love,
love, Like this I love you,
as you dress
and how your hair lifts up
and how your mouth smiles,
light as the water
of the spring upon the pure stones,
Like this I love you, beloved.

To bread I do not ask to teach me
but only not to lack during every day of life.
I don’t know anything about light, from where
it comes nor where it goes,
I only want the light to light up,
I do not ask to the night
explanations,
I wait for it and it envelops me,
And so you, bread and light
And shadow are.

You came to my life
with what you were bringing,
made
of light and bread and shadow I expected you,
and Like this I need you,
Like this I love you,
and to those who want to hear tomorrow
that which I will not tell them, let them read it here,
and let them back off today because it is early
for these arguments.

Tomorrow we will only give them
a leaf of the tree of our love, a leaf
which will fall on the earth
like if it had been made by our lips
like a kiss which falls
from our invincible heights
to show the fire and the tenderness
of a true love. 

Tell Me, Is The Rose Naked

Tell me, is the rose naked Or is that her only dress?

Khabarkan padaku jika mawar itu telanjang

Atau itukah sahaja pakaian kepunyaannya? Why do trees conceal The splendor of their roots?

Kenapa pokok-pokok sembunyikan

kemegahan gumpalan akarnya? Who hears the regrets Of the thieving automobile?

Siapa mampu dengar segala kekesalan

sebuah kereta yang suka mencuri?

Is there anything in the world sadder Than a train standing in the rain?

Apakah ada di dunia ini yang lebih sedih

daripada sebuah keretapi berdiri dalam hujan?

Always

I am not jealous of what came before me.

Come with a man on your shoulders,

Come with a hundred men in your hair,

Come with a thousand men between your breasts and your feet,

Come like a river full of drowned men which flows down to the wild sea,

To the eternal surf, to Time!

Bring them all to where I am waiting for you;

We shall always be alone, we shall always be you and I alone on earth,

To start our life!

Die Slowly

He who becomes the slave of habit, who follows the same routes every day, who never changes pace, who does not risk and change the color of his clothes, who does not speak and does not experience, dies slowly. He or she who shuns passion, who prefers black on white, dotting ones ?is? rather than a bundle of emotions, the kind that make your eyes glimmer, that turn a yawn into a smile, that make the heart pound in the face of mistakes and feelings, dies slowly. He or she who does not turn things topsy-turvy, who is unhappy at work, who does not risk certainty for uncertainty, to thus follow a dream, those who do not forego sound advice at least once in their lives, die slowly. He who does not travel, who does not read, who does not listen to music, who does not find grace in himself, dies slowly. He who slowly destroys his own self-esteem, who does not allow himself to be helped, who spends days on end complaining about his own bad luck, about the rain that never stops, dies slowly. He or she who abandon a project before starting it, who fail to ask questions on subjects he doesn?t know, he or she who don?t reply when they are asked something they do know, die slowly. Let?s try and avoid death in small doses, always reminding oneself that being alive requires an effort by far greater than the simple fact of breathing. Only a burning patience will lead to the attainment of a splendid happiness.

Live Life 

Hayati kehidupan

[nota aku: Aku muhasabah diri aku sendiri!]

You start dying slowly

If you do not travel

If you do not read

If you listen to the sounds of life

If you do not appreciate yourself

Kamu mulai mati perlahan-lahan

jika kamu tak bepergian

jika kamu tak membaca

jika kamu ikut bunyi-bunyi kehidupan

jika kamu tak hargai dirimu sendiri

You start dying slowly

when you kill your self-esteem

when you do not let others help you

Kamu mulai mati perlahan-lahan

pabila kamu bunuh harga dirimu

pabila kamu tak benar orang lain bantu kamu

You start dying slowly

If you become a slave of your habits

walking everyday on the same paths

if you don’t go after a dream

if you don’t allow yourself

at least once in your lifetime

to run away from sensible advice

Kamu mulai mati perlahan-lahan

jika kamu menjadi hamba abdi tabiat-tabiat kamu

berjalan setiap hari di lorong-lorong sama

jika kamu enggan kejar sebuah impian

jika kamu tak benar dirimu sendiri

sekurang-kurang sekali seumur hidupmu

melarikan dirimu sendiri daripada nasihat wajar 

Start living today

Hayati kehidupan bermula hari ini

Run risks today

Hadapi risiko-risiko hari ini 

Do something today

Lakukan sesuatu hari ini

Do not allow yourself to start dying slowly

Jangan biar dirimu sendiri mulai mati perlahan-lahan

Do not forget to be happy

Jangan lupa bergembira.

You Are The Daughter Of The Sea 

(translated by Stephen Tapscott)

You are the daughter of the sea, oregano's first cousin.

Swimmer, your body is pure as the water;

cook, your blood is quick as the soil.

Everything you do is full of flowers, rich with the earth.

Your eyes go out toward the water, and the waves rise;

your hands go out to the earth and the seeds swell;

you know the deep essence of water and the earth,

conjoined in you like a formula for clay.

Naiad: cut your body into turquoise pieces,

they will bloom resurrected in the kitchen.

This is how you become everything that lives.

And so at last, you sleep, in the circle of my arms

that push back the shadows so that you can rest--

vegetables, seaweed, herbs: the foam of your dreams.

A Dog Has Died 

My dog has died.
I buried him in the garden
next to a rusted old machine.

Anjing aku dah mati.

Aku tanam dia di taman

berdekatan sebuah mesin usang dan dah berkarat.

Some day I'll join him right there,

but now he's gone with his shaggy coat,
his bad manners and his cold nose,
and I, the materialist, who never believed
in any promised heaven in the sky
for any human being,
I believe in a heaven I'll never enter.
Yes, I believe in a heaven for all dogdom
where my dog waits for my arrival
waving his fan-like tail in friendship.

Suatu hari nanti aku akan menyertainya di sana,

tapi kini dia telah pergi dengan bulu serabutnya,

kelakuan-kelakuan buruknya dan hidung basahnya,

dan aku, seorang materialis, yang tak percaya

sebarang janji Tuhan di langit

kepada setiap manusia,

namun aku percaya kepada syurga aku takkan masuk.

Ya, sebaliknya aku percaya kepada syurga bagi kerajaan anjing

di mana anjing aku bakal menunggu ketibaan aku

mengodek-ngodek ekor bagai kipasnya sebagai tanda persaudaraan.

Ai, I'll not speak of sadness here on earth,
of having lost a companion
who was never servile.
His friendship for me, like that of a porcupine
withholding its authority,
was the friendship of a star, aloof,
with no more intimacy than was called for,
with no exaggerations:
he never climbed all over my clothes
filling me full of his hair or his mange,
he never rubbed up against my knee
like other dogs obsessed with sex.

Ah, aku takkan bercakap mengenai kesedihan di sini di atas bumi,

dek kerana hilang pendamping

yang tak pernah terlalu memperhambakan dirinya.

Persaudaraannya bagi aku, bagai seekor landak

yang menyembunyikan kuasanya,                                              

persaudaraan sebutir bintang, menyendiri,

tanpa kemesraan berlebihan had,

tanpa pelbagai tokok tambah:

dia tak injak pakaianku

mengotorkanku dengan bulu atau kutu,

dia tak gesel lututku

seperti anjing-anjing berahi.

No, my dog used to gaze at me,
paying me the attention I need,
the attention required
to make a vain person like me understand
that, being a dog, he was wasting time,
but, with those eyes so much purer than mine,
he'd keep on gazing at me
with a look that reserved for me alone
all his sweet and shaggy life,
always near me, never troubling me,
and asking nothing.

Tidak, dia dulu suka renung aku

beri perhatian terhadap keperluan aku,

perhatian yang diperlukan

bagi membolehkan seorang sombong seperti aku faham

yang, sebagai seekor anjing, dia sekadar menghabiskan masa,

tapi, dengan kedua-dua matanya yang lebih suci daripada milikku,

dia terus merenung aku

dengan pandangan khusus buatku

seluruh kemanisan dan keserabutan hidupnya,

sentiasa dekat dengan aku, tanpa beri masalah kepadaku,

dan tanpa mendambakan apa-apa.

Ai, how many times have I envied his tail
as we walked together on the shores of the sea
in the lonely winter of Isla Negra
where the wintering birds filled the sky
and my hairy dog was jumping about
full of the voltage of the sea's movement:
my wandering dog, sniffing away
with his golden tail held high,
face to face with the ocean's spray.

Ah, beberapa kali aku cemburu akan ekornya

sewaktu kami berjalan beriringan di gigi laut

di musim dingin yang sepi di Isla Negra

di mana beburung hijrah musim dingin penuh di angkasa

lalu anjing bulu lebatku melonjak-lonjak

penuh tenaga alunan laut:

anjingku tanpa arah tujuan, menguji bau dari jauh

dengan ekor keemasannya terpacak,

dia bersemuka percikan air laut.

Joyful, joyful, joyful,
as only dogs know how to be happy
with only the autonomy
of their shameless spirit.

Gembira, gembira, gembira,

kerana hanya anjing-anjing tahu cara bergembira

dengan hanya hak autonomi

semangat tak tahu malu mereka.

There are no good-byes for my dog who has died,
and we don't now and never did lie to each other.

Tiada sebarang ucapan perpisahan untuk anjingku yang mati,

dan kami kini dan selama-lamanya takkan membohongi satu sama lain.

So now he's gone and I buried him,
and that's all there is to it.

Beginilah, sekarang dia dah tiada dan aku dah tanam dia,

dan itulah sahaja tanpa penjelasan tambahan.

The Song Of The Despair

You swallowed everything, like distance.
Like the sea, like time.
In you everything sank!
It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss.
The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse.
Pilot's dread, fury of a blind diver,
turbulent drunkenness of love,
in you everything sank!

The memory of you emerges from the night around me.
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.

Deserted like the wharves at dawn.

It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one!

Cold flower heads are raining over my heart.
Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked.

In you the wars and the flights accumulated.
From you the wings of the song birds rose.

You swallowed everything, like distance.
Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank!

It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss.
The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse.

Pilot's dread, fury of blind driver,
turbulent drunkenness of love, in you everything sank!

In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded.
Lost discoverer, in you everything sank!

You girdled sorrow, you clung to desire,
sadness stunned you, in you everything sank!

I made the wall of shadow draw back,
beyond desire and act, I walked on.

Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost,
I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you.

Like a jar you housed infinite tenderness.
and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar.

There was the black solitude of the islands,
and there, woman of love, your arms took me in.

There was thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit.
There were grief and ruins, and you were the miracle.

Ah woman, I do not know how you could contain me
in the earth of your soul, in the cross of your arms!

How terrible and brief my desire was to you!
How difficult and drunken, how tensed and avid.

Cemetery of kisses, there is still fire in your tombs,
still the fruited boughs burn, pecked at by birds.

Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs,
oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bodies.

Oh the mad coupling of hope and force
in which we merged and despaired.

And the tenderness, light as water and as flour.
And the word scarcely begun on the lips.

This was my destiny and in it was my voyage of my longing,
and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank!

Oh pit of debris, everything fell into you,
what sorrow did you not express, in what sorrow are you not drowned!

From billow to billow you still called and sang.
Standing like a sailor in the prow of a vessel.

You still flowered in songs, you still brike the currents.
Oh pit of debris, open and bitter well.

Pale blind diver, luckless slinger,
lost discoverer, in you everything sank!

It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour
which the night fastens to all the timetables.

The rustling belt of the sea girdles the shore.
Cold stars heave up, black birds migrate.

Deserted like the wharves at dawn.
Only tremulous shadow twists in my hands.

Oh farther than everything. Oh farther than everything.

It is the hour of departure. Oh abandoned one!]

I Am Explaining A Few Things 

You are going to ask: and where are the lilacs?
and the poppy-petalled metaphysics?
and the rain repeatedly spattering
its words and drilling them full
of apertures and birds?
I'll tell you all the news.

I lived in a suburb,
a suburb of Madrid, with bells,
and clocks, and trees.

From there you could look out
over Castille's dry face:
a leather ocean.
My house was called
the house of flowers, because in every cranny
geraniums burst: it was
a good-looking house
with its dogs and children.
Remember, Raul?
Eh, Rafel? Federico, do you remember
from under the ground
my balconies on which
the light of June drowned flowers in your mouth?
Brother, my brother!
Everything
loud with big voices, the salt of merchandises,
pile-ups of palpitating bread,
the stalls of my suburb of Arguelles with its statue
like a drained inkwell in a swirl of hake:
oil flowed into spoons,
a deep baying
of feet and hands swelled in the streets,
metres, litres, the sharp
measure of life,
stacked-up fish,
the texture of roofs with a cold sun in which
the weather vane falters,
the fine, frenzied ivory of potatoes,
wave on wave of tomatoes rolling down the sea.

And one morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings --
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
Bandits with planes and Moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
bandits with black friars spattering blessings
came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children's blood.

Jackals that the jackals would despise,
stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the vipers would abominate!

Face to face with you I have seen the blood
of Spain tower like a tide
to drown you in one wave
of pride and knives!

Treacherous
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken Spain :
from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers,
from every socket of Spain
Spain emerges
and from every dead child a rifle with eyes,
and from every crime bullets are born
which will one day find
the bull's eye of your hearts.

And you'll ask: why doesn't his poetry
speak of dreams and leaves
and the great volcanoes of his native land?

Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
The blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
In the streets!

Drunk As Drunk

Translated from the Spanish by Christopher Logue

Drunk as drunk on turpentine
From your open kisses,
Your wet body wedged
Between my wet body and the strake
Of our boat that is made of flowers,
Feasted, we guide it - our fingers
Like tallows adorned with yellow metal -
Over the sky's hot rim,
The day's last breath in our sails.

Pinned by the sun between solstice
And equinox, drowsy and tangled together
We drifted for months and woke
With the bitter taste of land on our lips,
Eyelids all sticky, and we longed for lime
And the sound of a rope
Lowering a bucket down its well. Then,
We came by night to the Fortunate Isles,
And lay like fish
Under the net of our kisses.

Poetry

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,
felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind.

Ode To The Lemon 

Out of lemon flowers
loosed
on the moonlight, love's
lashed and insatiable
essences,
sodden with fragrance,
the lemon tree's yellow
emerges,
the lemons
move down
from the tree's planetarium

Delicate merchandise!
The harbors are big with it-
bazaars
for the light and the
barbarous gold.
We open
the halves
of a miracle,
and a clotting of acids
brims
into the starry
divisions:
creation's
original juices,
irreducible, changeless,
alive:
so the freshness lives on
in a lemon,
in the sweet-smelling house of the rind,
the proportions, arcane and acerb.

Cutting the lemon
the knife
leaves a little cathedral:
alcoves unguessed by the eye
that open acidulous glass
to the light; topazes
riding the droplets,
altars,
aromatic facades.

So, while the hand
holds the cut of the lemon,
half a world
on a trencher,
the gold of the universe
wells
to your touch:
a cup yellow
with miracles,
a breast and a ******
perfuming the earth;
a flashing made fruitage,
the diminutive fire of a planet.

The Heights of Macchu Picchu

Arise to birth with me, my brother.
Give me your hand out of the depths
sown by your sorrows.
You will not return from these stone fastnesses.
You will not emerge from subterranean time.
Your rasping voice will not come back,
nor your pierced eyes rise from their sockets.

Look at me from the depths of the earth,
tiller of fields, weaver, reticent shepherd,
groom of totemic guanacos,
mason high on your treacherous scaffolding,
iceman of Andean tears,
jeweler with crushed fingers,
farmer anxious among his seedlings,
potter wasted among his clays--
bring to the cup of this new life
your ancient buried sorrows.
Show me your blood and your furrow;
say to me: here I was scourged
because a gem was dull or because the earth
failed to give up in time its tithe of corn or stone.
Point out to me the rock on which you stumbled,
the wood they used to crucify your body.
Strike the old flints
to kindle ancient lamps, light up the whips
glued to your wounds throughout the centuries
and light the axes gleaming with your blood.

I come to speak for your dead mouths.

Throughout the earth
let dead lips congregate,
out of the depths spin this long night to me
as if I rode at anchor here with you.

And tell me everything, tell chain by chain,
and link by link, and step by step;
sharpen the knives you kept hidden away,
thrust them into my breast, into my hands,
like a torrent of sunbursts,
an Amazon of buried jaguars,
and leave me cry: hours, days and years,
blind ages, stellar centuries.

And give me silence, give me water, hope.
Give me the struggle, the iron, the volcanoes.
Let bodies cling like magnets to my body.
Come quickly to my veins and to my mouth.
Speak through my speech, and through my blood.

Lost In The Forest 

Lost in the forest, I broke off a dark twig
and lifted its whisper to my thirsty lips:
maybe it was the voice of the rain crying,
a cracked bell, or a torn heart.

Something from far off it seemed
deep and secret to me, hidden by the earth,
a shout muffled by huge autumns,
by the moist half-open darkness of the leaves.

Wakening from the dreaming forest there, the hazel-sprig
sang under my tongue, its drifting fragrance
climbed up through my conscious mind

as if suddenly the roots I had left behind
cried out to me, the land I had lost with my childhood---
and I stopped, wounded by the wandering scent.

Nothing But Death

There are cemeteries that are lonely,
graves full of bones that do not make a sound,
the heart moving through a tunnel,
in it darkness, darkness, darkness,
like a shipwreck we die going into ourselves,
as though we were drowning inside our hearts,
as though we lived falling out of the skin into the soul.

And there are corpses,
feet made of cold and sticky clay,
death is inside the bones,
like a barking where there are no dogs,
coming out from bells somewhere, from graves somewhere,
growing in the damp air like tears of rain.

Sometimes I see alone
coffins under sail,
embarking with the pale dead, with women that have dead hair,
with bakers who are as white as angels,
and pensive young girls married to notary publics,
caskets sailing up the vertical river of the dead,
the river of dark purple,
moving upstream with sails filled out by the sound of death,
filled by the sound of death which is silence.

Death arrives among all that sound
like a shoe with no foot in it, like a suit with no man in it,
comes and knocks, using a ring with no stone in it, with no
finger in it,
comes and shouts with no mouth, with no tongue, with no
throat.
Nevertheless its steps can be heard
and its clothing makes a hushed sound, like a tree.

I'm not sure, I understand only a little, I can hardly see,
but it seems to me that its singing has the color of damp violets,
of violets that are at home in the earth,
because the face of death is green,
and the look death gives is green,
with the penetrating dampness of a violet leaf
and the somber color of embittered winter.

But death also goes through the world dressed as a broom,
lapping the floor, looking for dead bodies,
death is inside the broom,
the broom is the tongue of death looking for corpses,
it is the needle of death looking for thread.

Death is inside the folding cots:
it spends its life sleeping on the slow mattresses,
in the black blankets, and suddenly breathes out:
it blows out a mournful sound that swells the sheets,
and the beds go sailing toward a port
where death is waiting, dressed like an admiral.
Translated by Robert Bly

Each Day You Play

Each day you play with the light of the world.
Subtle visitor, you arrive in flower and water.
You are more than this white head I hold so tightly
as a bouquet, each day, between both my hands.

You are like nobody since I love you.
Let me spread you out among yellow wreaths.
Who writes your name in smoke among southern stars?
Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed.

The wind howls suddenly and bangs on my shut window.
The sky is a net filled with shadowy fish.
Here come the winds, every single one.
The rain undresses.

Birds go by, fleeing.
The wind.  The wind.
And I can only contend against the power of men.
The storm whirls dark leaves
and frees boats that last night were moored to the sky.

But you are here.  Oh, you don’t run away.
You answer me to the final cry.
Cling to me now as if you were afraid.
Even if a strange shadow once ran through your eyes.

And now too, little one, you bring me honeysuckle,
and your breasts, too, are filled with their scent.
While the sad wind goes slaughtering butterflies,
I love you, and my happiness bites the plum of your mouth.

How you must have suffered getting used to me,
to my lonely, savage soul, my name that sends them all running.
How often we’ve watched stars burn and kiss our eyes,
and above our heads, gray light unwind in spinning fans.

My words rained over you, stroking you.
For long I have loved the sunned pearl of your body.
So long, in fact, I believe you own the universe.
So I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains, bluebells,
dark hazels, a rustic basket of kisses.

I want to do with you
what spring does with the cherry trees.

— Pablo Neruda

Translated from Spanish by Paul Weinfield, © 2013

Perhaps Not To Be

Perhaps not to be is to be without your being,
without your going, that cuts noon light
like a blue flower, without your passing
later through fog and stones,
without the torch you lift in your hand
that others may not see as golden,
that perhaps no one believed blossomed
the glowing origin of the rose,
without, in the end, your being, your coming
suddenly, inspiringly, to know my life,
blaze of the rose-tree, wheat of the breeze:
and it follows that I am, because you are:
it follows from ‘you are’, that I am, and we:
and, because of love, you will, I will,
We will, come to be.

Water

Everything on the earth bristled, the bramble
pricked and the green thread
nibbled away, the petal fell, falling
until the only flower was the falling itself.
Water is another matter,
has no direction but its own bright grace,
runs through all imaginable colors,
takes limpid lessons
from stone,
and in those functionings plays out
the unrealized ambitions of the foam.

Fleas Interest Me So Much 

Fleas interest me so much
that I let them bite me for hours.
They are perfect, ancient, Sanskrit,
machines that admit of no appeal.
They do not bite to eat,
they bite only to jump;
they are the dancers of the celestial sphere,
delicate acrobats
in the softest and most profound circus;
let them gallop on my skin,
divulge their emotions,
amuse themselves with my blood,
but someone should introduce them to me.
I want to know them closely,
I want to know what to rely on.

Walking Around 

It so happens I am sick of being a man.
And it happens that I walk into tailorshops and movie
houses
dried up, waterproof, like a swan made of felt
steering my way in a water of wombs and ashes.

The smell of barbershops makes me break into hoarse
sobs.
The only thing I want is to lie still like stones or wool.
The only thing I want is to see no more stores, no gardens,
no more goods, no spectacles, no elevators.

It so happens that I am sick of my feet and my nails
and my hair and my shadow.
It so happens I am sick of being a man.

Still it would be marvelous
to terrify a law clerk with a cut lily,
or kill a nun with a blow on the ear.
It would be great
to go through the streets with a green knife
letting out yells until I died of the cold.

I don't want to go on being a root in the dark,
insecure, stretched out, shivering with sleep,
going on down, into the moist guts of the earth,
taking in and thinking, eating every day.

I don't want so much misery.
I don't want to go on as a root and a tomb,
alone under the ground, a warehouse with corpses,
half frozen, dying of grief.

That's why Monday, when it sees me coming
with my convict face, blazes up like gasoline,
and it howls on its way like a wounded wheel,
and leaves tracks full of warm blood leading toward the
night.

And it pushes me into certain corners, into some moist
houses,
into hospitals where the bones fly out the window,
into shoeshops that smell like vinegar,
and certain streets hideous as cracks in the skin.

There are sulphur-colored birds, and hideous intestines
hanging over the doors of houses that I hate,
and there are false teeth forgotten in a coffeepot,
there are mirrors
that ought to have wept from shame and terror,
there are umbrellas everywhere, and venoms, and umbilical
cords.

I stroll along serenely, with my eyes, my shoes,
my rage, forgetting everything,
I walk by, going through office buildings and orthopedic
shops,
and courtyards with washing hanging from the line:
underwear, towels and shirts from which slow
dirty tears are falling.

Ode To Sadness

Sadness, scarab
with seven crippled feet,
spiderweb egg,
scramble-brained rat,
bitch's skeleton:
No entry here.
Don't come in.
Go away.
Go back
south with your umbrella,
go back
north with your serpent's teeth.
A poet lives here.
No sadness may
cross this threshold.
Through these windows
comes the breath of the world,
fresh red roses,
flags embroidered with
the victories of the people.
No.
No entry.
Flap
your bat's wings,
I will trample the feathers
that fall from your mantle,
I will sweep the bits and pieces
of your carcass to
the four corners of the wind,
I will wring your neck,
I will stitch your eyelids shut,
I will sew your shroud,
sadness, and bury your rodent bones
beneath the springtime of an apple tree.

Absence

I have scarcely left you
When you go in me, crystalline,
Or trembling,
Or uneasy, wounded by me
Or overwhelmed with love, as
when your eyes
Close upon the gift of life
That without cease I give you.

Aku hampir sahaja meninggalkanmu
ketika kau tembus ke dalam tubuhku, sejernih kristal,
atau menggeletar,
atau resah, terluka olehku
atau tenggelam dalam kasih, sebagaimana

ketika kedua-dua matamu

terhadang dengan hadiah kehidupan
tanpa henti aku beri kepadamu.

My love,
We have found each other
Thirsty and we have
Drunk up all the water and the
Blood,
We found each other
Hungry
And we bit each other
As fire bites,
Leaving wounds in us.

Sayangku,
kita telah menemukan satu sama lain
dahaga dan kita telah
minum semua air dan

darah,
kita menemukan satu sama lain
kelaparan
dan kita gigit satu sama lain
bagai gigitan api,
meninggalkan luka-luka di dalam tubuh kita.

But wait for me,

Keep for me your sweetness.
I will give you too
A rose.

Namun tunggulah aku,
simpanlah kemanisanmu untukku.
Aku jua akan beri kamu
sekuntum mawar.

I Crave Your Mouth 

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.
Translated by Stephen Tapscott

The Light 

The light wraps you in its mortal flame.
Abstracted pale mourner, standing that way
against the old propellers of the twighlight
that revolves around you.

Speechless, my friend,
alone in the loneliness of this hour of the dead
and filled with the lives of fire,
pure heir of the ruined day.

A bough of fruit falls from the sun on your dark garment.
The great roots of night
grow suddenly from your soul,
and the things that hide in you come out again
so that a blue and palled people
your newly born, takes nourishment.

Oh magnificent and fecund and magnetic slave
of the circle that moves in turn through black and gold:
rise, lead and possess a creation
so rich in life that its flowers perish
and it is full of sadness.

Sonnet XI

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.

Death Alone

There are lone cemeteries,
tombs full of soundless bones,
the heart threading a tunnel,
a dark, dark tunnel :
like a wreck we die to the very core,
as if drowning at the heart
or collapsing inwards from skin to soul.

There are corpses,
clammy slabs for feet,
there is death in the bones,
like a pure sound,
a bark without its dog,
out of certain bells, certain tombs
swelling in this humidity like lament or rain.

I see, when alone at times,
coffins under sail
setting out with the pale dead, women in their dead braids,
bakers as white as angels,
thoughtful girls married to notaries,
coffins ascending the vertical river of the dead,
the wine-dark river to its source,
with their sails swollen with the sound of death,
filled with the silent noise of death.

Death is drawn to sound
like a slipper without a foot, a suit without its wearer,
comes to knock with a ring, stoneless and fingerless,
comes to shout without a mouth, a tongue, without a throat.
Nevertheless its footsteps sound
and its clothes echo, hushed like a tree.

I do not know, I am ignorant, I hardly see
but it seems to me that its song has the colour of wet violets,
violets well used to the earth,
since the face of death is green,
and the gaze of death green
with the etched moisture of a violet's leaf
and its grave colour of exasperated winter.

But death goes about the earth also, riding a broom
lapping the ground in search of the dead -
death is in the broom,
it is the tongue of death looking for the dead,
the needle of death looking for the thread.

Death lies in our beds :
in the lazy mattresses, the black blankets,
lives a full stretch and then suddenly blows,
blows sound unknown filling out the sheets
and there are beds sailing into a harbour
where death is waiting, dressed as an admiral.

I Remember You As You Were

I remember you as you were in the last autumn.
You were the grey beret and the still heart.
In your eyes the flames of the twilight fought on.
And the leaves fell in the water of your soul.

Clasping my arms like a climbing plant
the leaves garnered your voice, that was slow and at peace.
Bonfire of awe in which my thirst was burning.
Sweet blue hyacinth twisted over my soul.

I feel your eyes traveling, and the autumn is far off:
Grey beret, voice of a bird, heart like a house
Towards which my deep longings migrated
And my kisses fell, happy as embers.

Sky from a ship. Field from the hills:
Your memory is made of light, of smoke, of a still pond!
Beyond your eyes, farther on, the evenings were blazing.
Dry autumn leaves revolved in your soul.

Megallanic Penguin 

Neither clown nor child nor black
nor white but verticle
and a questioning innocence
dressed in night and snow:
The mother smiles at the sailor,
the fisherman at the astronaunt,
but the child child does not smile
when he looks at the bird child,
and from the disorderly ocean
the immaculate passenger
emerges in snowy mourning.

I was without doubt the child bird
there in the cold archipelagoes
when it looked at me with its eyes,
with its ancient ocean eyes:
it had neither arms nor wings
but hard little oars
on its sides:
it was as old as the salt;
the age of moving water,
and it looked at me from its age:
since then I know I do not exist;
I am a worm in the sand.

the reasons for my respect
remained in the sand:
the religious bird
did not need to fly,
did not need to sing,
and through its form was visible
its wild soul bled salt:
as if a vein from the bitter sea
had been broken.

Penguin, static traveler,
deliberate priest of the cold,
I salute your vertical salt
and envy your plumed pride.

Ode To Broken Things 

Things get broken
at home
like they were pushed
by an invisible, deliberate smasher.
It's not my hands
or yours
It wasn't the girls
with their hard fingernails
or the motion of the planet.
It wasn't anything or anybody
It wasn't the wind
It wasn't the orange-colored noontime
Or night over the earth
It wasn't even the nose or the elbow
Or the hips getting bigger
or the ankle
or the air.
The plate broke, the lamp fell
All the flower pots tumbled over
one by one. That pot
which overflowed with scarlet
in the middle of October,
it got tired from all the violets
and another empty one
rolled round and round and round
all through winter
until it was only the powder
of a flowerpot,
a broken memory, shining dust.

And that clock
whose sound
was
the voice of our lives,
the secret
thread of our weeks,
which released
one by one, so many hours
for honey and silence
for so many births and jobs,
that clock also
fell
and its delicate blue guts
vibrated
among the broken glass
its wide heart
unsprung.

Life goes on grinding up
glass, wearing out clothes
making fragments
breaking down
forms
and what lasts through time
is like an island on a ship in the sea,
perishable
surrounded by dangerous fragility
by merciless waters and threats.

Let's put all our treasures together
-- the clocks, plates, cups cracked by the cold --
into a sack and carry them
to the sea
and let our possessions sink
into one alarming breaker
that sounds like a river.
May whatever breaks
be reconstructed by the sea
with the long labor of its tides.
So many useless things
which nobody broke
but which got broken anyway

Ode To Artichoke

The artichoke
With a tender heart
Dressed up like a warrior,
Standing at attention, it built

A small helmet
Under its scales
It remained
Unshakeable,
By its side
The crazy vegetables
Uncurled
Their tendrills and leaf-crowns,
Throbbing bulbs,
In the sub-soil
The carrot
With its red mustaches
Was sleeping,
The grapevine
Hung out to dry its branches
Through which the wine will rise,
The cabbage
Dedicated itself
To trying on skirts,
The oregano
To perfuming the world,
And the sweet
Artichoke
There in the garden,
Dressed like a warrior,
Burnished
Like a proud
Pomegrante.
And one day
Side by side
In big wicker baskets
Walking through the market
To realize their dream
The artichoke army
In formation.
Never was it so military
Like on parade.
The men
In their white shirts
Among the vegetables
Were
The Marshals
Of the artichokes
Lines in close order
Command voices,
And the bang
Of a falling box.

But
Then
Maria
Comes
With her basket
She chooses
An artichoke,
She's not afraid of it.
She examines it, she observes it
Up against the light like it was an egg,
She buys it,
She mixes it up
In her handbag
With a pair of shoes
With a cabbage head and a
Bottle
Of vinegar
Until
She enters the kitchen
And submerges it in a pot.

Thus ends
In peace
This career
Of the armed vegetable
Which is called an artichoke,
Then
Scale by scale,
We strip off
The delicacy
And eat
The peaceful mush
Of its green heart.

Poet's Obligation 

To whoever is not listening to the sea
this Friday morning, to whoever is cooped up
in house or office, factory or woman
or street or mine or harsh prison cell;
to him I come, and, without speaking or looking,
I arrive and open the door of his prison,
and a vibration starts up, vague and insistent,
a great fragment of thunder sets in motion
the rumble of the planet and the foam,
the raucous rivers of the ocean flood,
the star vibrates swiftly in its corona,
and the sea is beating, dying and continuing.

So, drawn on by my destiny,
I ceaselessly must listen to and keep
the sea's lamenting in my awareness,
I must feel the crash of the hard water
and gather it up in a perpetual cup
so that, wherever those in prison may be,
wherever they suffer the autumn's castigation,
I may be there with an errant wave,
I may move, passing through windows,
and hearing me, eyes will glance upward
saying 'How can I reach the sea?'
And I shall broadcast, saying nothing,
the starry echoes of the wave,
a breaking up of foam and quicksand,
a rustling of salt withdrawing,
the grey cry of the sea-birds on the coast.


So, through me, freedom and the sea
will make their answer to the shuttered heart.

Tie Your Heart

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.

So That You Will Hear Me

So that you will hear me
my words
sometimes grow thin
as the tracks of the gulls on the beaches.

Necklace, drunken bell
for your hands smooth as grapes.

And I watch my words from a long way off.
They are more yours than mine.
They climb on my old suffering like ivy.

It climbs the same way on damp walls.
You are to blame for this cruel sport.
They are fleeing from my dark lair.
You fill everything, you fill everything.

Before you they peopled the solitude that you occupy,
and they are more used to my sadness than you are.

Now I want them to say what I want to say to you
to make you hear as I want you to hear me.

The wind of anguish still hauls on them as usual.
Sometimes hurricanes of dreams still knock them over.
You listen to other voices in my painful voice.

Lament of old mouths, blood of old supplications.
Love me, companion. Don't forsake me. Follow me.
Follow me, companion, on this wave of anguish.

But my words become stained with your love.
You occupy everything, you occupy everything.

I am making them into an endless necklace
for your white hands, smooth as grapes.

Poet Of The People 

Gentleman Alone

The gay young men and the love-sick girls,
and the abandoned widows suffering in sleepless delirium,
and the young pregnant wives of thirty hours,
and the raucous cats that cruise my garden in the shadows,
like a necklace of pulsating oysters of sex
surround my lonely residence,
like enemies lined up against my soul,
like conspirators in bedroom clothes
who exchange long deep kisses to order.
The radiant summer leads to lovers
in predictable melancholic regiments,
made of fat and skinny, sad and happy pairings:
under the elegant coconut palms, near the ocean and the moon,
goes an endless movement of trousers and dresses,
a whisper of silk stockings being caressed,
and womens breasts that sparkle like eyes.

The little employee, after it all,
after the weeks boredom, and novels read by night in bed,
has definitively seduced the girl next door,
and carried her away to a run-down movie house
where the heroes are studs or princes mad with passion,
and strokes her legs covered with soft down
with his moist and ardent hands that smell of cigarettes.

The seducers afternoons and married peoples nights
come together like the sheets and bury me,
and the hours after lunch when the young male students
and the young girl students, and the priests, masturbate,
and the creatures fornicate outright,
and the bees smell of blood, and the flies madly buzz,
and boy and girl cousins play oddly together,
and doctors stare in fury at the young patients husband,
and the morning hours in which the professor, as if to pass the time,
performs his marriage duties, and breakfasts,
and moreover, the adulterers, who love each other truly
on beds as high and deep as ocean liners:
finally, eternally surrounding me
is a gigantic forest breathing and tangled
with gigantic flowers like mouths with teeth
and black roots in the shape of hooves and shoes.

Leave Me A Place Underground 

Leave me a place underground, a labyrinth,
where I can go, when I wish to turn,
without eyes, without touch,
in the void, to dumb stone,
or the finger of shadow.

I know that you cannot, no one, no thing
can deliver up that place, or that path,
but what can I do with my pitiful passions,
if they are no use, on the surface
of everyday life,
if I cannot look to survive,
except by dying, going beyond, entering
into the state, metallic and slumbering,
of primeval flame?

The United Fruit Co.

When the trumpet sounded, it was
all prepared on the earth,
the Jehovah parcelled out the earth
to Coca Cola, Inc., Anaconda,
Ford Motors, and other entities:
The Fruit Company, Inc.
reserved for itself the most succulent,
the central coast of my own land,
the delicate waist of America.
It rechristened its territories
as the ’Banana Republics’
and over the sleeping dead,
over the restless heroes
who brought about the greatness, the liberty and the flags,
it established the comic opera:
abolished the independencies,
presented crowns of Caesar,
unsheathed envy, attracted
the dictatorship of the flies,
Trujillo flies, Tacho flies,
Carias flies, Martines flies,
Ubico flies, damp flies
of modest blood and marmalade,
drunken flies who zoom
over the ordinary graves,
circus flies, wise flies
well trained in tyranny.

Among the blood-thirsty flies
the Fruit Company lands its ships,
taking off the coffee and the fruit;
the treasure of our submerged
territories flow as though
on plates into the ships.

Meanwhile Indians are falling
into the sugared chasms
of the harbours, wrapped
for burials in the mist of the dawn:
a body rolls, a thing
that has no name, a fallen cipher,
a cluster of the dead fruit
thrown down on the dump.

Sonnet IX

There where the waves shatter on the restless rocks
the clear light bursts and enacts its rose,
and the sea-circle shrinks to a cluster of buds,
to one drop of blue salt, falling.

O bright magnolia bursting in the foam,
magnetic transient whose death blooms
and vanishes--being, nothingness--forever:
broken salt, dazzling lurch of the sea.

You & I, Love, together we ratify the silence,
while the sea destroys its perpetual statues,
collapses its towers of wild speed and whiteness:

because in the weavings of those invisible fabrics,
galloping water, incessant sand,
we make the only permanent tenderness.

Ode To Clothes

Every morning you wait,
clothes, over a chair,
to fill yourself with
my vanity, my love,
my hope, my body.
Barely
risen from sleep,
I relinquish the water,
enter your sleeves,
my legs look for
the hollows of your legs,
and so embraced
by your indefatigable faithfulness
I rise, to tread the grass,
enter poetry,
consider through the windows,
the things,
the men, the women,
the deeds and the fights
go on forming me,
go on making me face things
working my hands,
opening my eyes,
using my mouth,
and so,
clothes,
I too go forming you,
extending your elbows,
snapping your threads,
and so your life expands
in the image of my life.
In the wind
you billow and snap
as if you were my soul,
at bad times
you cling
to my bones,
vacant, for the night,
darkness, sleep
populate with their phantoms
your wings and mine.
I wonder
if one day
a bullet
from the enemy
will leave you stained with my blood
and then
you will die with me
or one day
not quite
so dramatic
but simple,
you will fall ill,
clothes,
with me,
grow old
with me, with my body
and joined
we will enter
the earth.
Because of this
each day
I greet you
with reverence and then
you embrace me and I forget you,
because we are one
and we will go on
facing the wind, in the night,
the streets or the fight,
a single body,
one day, one day, some day, still.

Ode Untuk Pakaian

 

Setiap pagi, kamu pakaian semua, menanti

di atas kursi,
untuk mengisi dirimu sendiri dengan
kesombonganku, cintaku,
harapanku, tubuhku.

Sebaik saja bangun tidur,
kulepaskan air,
masuk lengan-lenganmu,
dan kaki-kakiku mencari
rongga-rongga kaki-kakimu,
dan kemudian dengan merangkul

kesetiaanmu yang tanpa had
aku bangkit, demi menginjak rumput,
masuk ruang puisi,
mempertimbang suasana di luar jendela-jendela,
segala benda,
lelaki-lelaki, perempuan-perempuan,
seluruh amalan dan pertarungan,
terus membentuk aku,
terus memaksa aku menghadap pelbagai perkara
menggerak tangan-tanganku,
membuka kedua-dua mataku,
mengguna mulutku,

dan oleh itu,

wahai semua pakaian,
aku pun turut membentukmu,
melebarkan bahagian siku-sikumu,
merentap benang-benang jahitanmu,
lalu hidupmu berkembang
ke dalam imej kehidupanku.

Terdedah di udara

kamu menggelembung dan tersentak
bagaikan kamu adalah jiwaku,
di saat masa sukar
kamu melekap

pada tulang-tulangku,

kosong, sepanjang malam,
kegelapan, lelap

dikerumuni hantu-hantu mereka
sayap-sayapmu dan sayap-sayapku.

Terasa di lubuk hatiku,
jika suatu hari nanti
sebutir peluru
musuh
akan meninggalkan kesan darahku
lalu
kamu mati bersamaku
atau suatu hari
tak begitu
dramatik
tapi sederhana,
kamu jatuh sakit,
wahai semua pakaian,
bersamaku,
menjadi tua

bersamaku, bersama tubuhku
lalu kita bersatu
memasuki
bumi ini.
Oleh kerana ini
setiap hari
aku menyapa kamu
dengan penghormatan lalu
kamu erat peluk aku dan aku lupakan kamu,
kerana kita adalah satu
dan kita terus
menghadap angin, pada waktu malam,
lorong-lorong atau pertarungan,
tubuh sendiri,
suatu hari, satu hari, suatu hari nanti, masih sama.

The Eight of September 

This day, Today, was a brimming glass.
This day, Today, was an immense wave.
This day was all the Earth.
This day, the storm-driven ocean
lifted us up in a kiss
so exalted we trembled
at the lightning flash
and bound as one, fell,
and drowned, without being unbound.
This day our bodies grew
stretched out to Earth’s limits,
orbited there, melded there
to one globe of wax, or a meteor’s flame.
A strange door opened, between us,
and someone, with no face as yet,
waited for us there.

Potter

Your whole body has
a fullness or a gentleness destined for me.

When I move my hand up
I find in each place a dove
that was seeking me, as
if they had, love, made you of clay
for my own potter's hands.

Your knees, your breasts,
your waist
are missing parts of me like the hollow
of a thirsty earth
from which they broke off
a form,
and together
we are complete like a single river,
like a single grain of sand.

I Love You

The Old Women of The Ocean 

To the solemn sea the old women come
With their shawls knotted around their necks
With their fragile feet cracking.

They sit down alone on the shore
Without moving their eyes or their hands
Without changing the clouds or the silence.

The obscene sea breaks and claws
Rushes downhill trumpeting
Shakes its bull's beard.

The gentle old ladies seated
As if in a transparent boat
They look at the terrorist waves.

Where will they go and where have they been?
They come from every corner
They come from our own lives.

Now they have the ocean
The cold and burning emptiness
The solitude full of flames.

They come from all the pasts
From houses which were fragrant
From burnt-up evenings.

They look, or don't look, at the sea
With their walking sticks they draw signs in the sand
And the sea erases their calligraphy.

The old women get up and go away
With their fragile bird feet
While the waves flood in
Traveling naked in the wind.

Come With Me

Come with me, I said, and no one knew
where, or how my pain throbbed,
no carnations or barcaroles for me,
only a wound that love had opened.

I said it again: Come with me, as if I were dying,
and no one saw the moon that bled in my mouth
or the blood that rose into the silence.
O Love, now we can forget the star that has such thorns!

That is why when I heard your voice repeat
Come with me, it was as if you had let loose
the grief, the love, the fury of a cork-trapped wine

the geysers flooding from deep in its vault:
in my mouth I felt the taste of fire again,
of blood and carnations, of rock and scald.

Ode To Age

I don't believe in age.
All old people
carry
in their eyes,
a child,
and children,
at times
observe us with the
eyes of wise ancients.
Shall we measure
life
in meters or kilometers
or months?
How far since you were born?
How long
must you wander
until
like all men
instead of walking on its surface
we rest below the earth?
To the man, to the woman
who utilized their
energies, goodness, strength,
anger, love, tenderness,
to those who truly
alive
flowered,
and in their sensuality matured,
let us not apply
the measure
of a time
that may be
something else, a mineral
mantle, a solar
bird, a flower,
something, maybe,
but not a measure.
Time, metal
or bird, long
petiolate flower,
stretch
through
man's life,
shower him
with blossoms
and with
bright
water
or with hidden sun.
I proclaim you
road,
not shroud,
a pristine
ladder
with treads
of air,
a suit lovingly
renewed
through springtimes
around the world.
Now,
time, I roll you up,
I deposit you in my
bait box
and I am off to fish
with your long line
the fishes of the dawn!
(translated from the Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden)

Ode On Ironing

Poetry is white:
it comes from water swathed in drops,
it wrinkles and gathers,
this planet's skin has to spread out,
the sea's whiteness has to be ironed out,
and the hands keep moving,
the sacred surfaces get smoothed,
and things are done this way:
the hands make the world every day,
fire conjoins with steel,
linen, canvas, and cotton arrive
from the scuffles in the laundries,
and from light a dove is born:
chastity returns out of the foam.

Only Death 

There are lone cemeteries.
tombs filled with soundless bones,
the heart passing through a tunnel
dark, dark, dark,
like a shipwreck we die inward,
like smothering in our hearts,
like slowly falling from our skin down to our soul.

There are corpses,
there are feet of sticky, cold gravestone,
there is death in the bones,
like a pure sound,
like a bark without a dog,
coming from certain bells, from certain tombs,
growing in the dampness like teardrops or raindrops.

I see alone, at times,
coffins with sails
weighing anchor with pale corpses, with dead-tressed women,
with bakers white as angels,
with pensive girls married to notaries,
coffins going up the vertical river of the dead,
the dark purple river,
upstream, with the sails swollen by the sound of death,
swollen by the silent sound of death.

To resonance comes death
like a shoe without a foot, like a suit without a man,
she comes to knock with a stoneless and fingerless ring,
she comes to shout without mouth, without tongue, without throat.
Yet her steps sound
and her dress sounds, silent, like a tree.

I know little, I am not well acquainted, I can scarcely see,
but I think that her song has the color of moist violets,
of violets accustomed to the earth,
because the face of death is green,
and the gaze of death is green,
with the sharp dampness of a violet leaf
and its dark color of exasperated winter.

But death also goes through the world dressed as a broom,
she licks the ground looking for corpses,
death is in the broom,
it is death’s tongue looking for dead bodies,
it is death’s needle looking for thread.

Death is on the cots:
in the slow mattresses, in the black blankets
she lives stretched out, and she suddenly blows:
she blows a dark sound that puffs out sheets,
and there are beds sailing to a port
where she is waiting, dressed as an admiral.

The Dead Woman 

If suddenly you do not exist,
if suddenly you no longer live,
I shall live on.

I do not dare,
I do not dare to write it,
if you die.

I shall live on.

For where a man has no voice,
there, my voice.

Where blacks are beaten,
I cannot be dead.
When my brothers go to prison
I shall go with them.

When victory,
not my victory,
but the great victory comes,
even though I am mute I must speak;
I shall see it come even
though I am blind.

No, forgive me.
If you no longer live,
if you, beloved, my love,
if you have died,
all the leaves will fall in my breast,
it will rain on my soul night and day,
the snow will burn my heart,
I shall walk with frost and fire and death and snow,
my feet will want to walk to where you are sleeping, but
I shall stay alive,
because above all things
you wanted me indomitable,
and, my love, because you know that I am not only a man
but all mankind.

Ode To The Sea 

Here
Surrounding the island
There's sea.
But what sea?
It's always overflowing.
Says yes,
Then no,
Then no again,
And no,
Says yes
In blue
In sea spray
Raging,
Says no
And no again.
It can't be still.
It stammers
My name is sea.


It slaps the rocks
And when they aren't convinced,
Strokes them
And soaks them
And smothers them with kisses.
With seven green tongues
Of seven green dogs
Or seven green tigers
Or seven green seas,
Beating its chest,
Stammering its name,


Oh Sea,
This is your name.
Oh comrade ocean,
Don't waste time
Or water
Getting so upset
Help us instead.
We are meagre fishermen,
Men from the shore
Who are hungry and cold
And you're our foe.
Don't beat so hard,
Don't shout so loud,
Open your green coffers,
Place gifts of silver in our hands.
Give us this day
our daily fish.

Longer version

Ode to the Sea

Here on the island
the sea
and so much sea
overflowing,
relentless,
it says yes, then no,
then no, no, no,
then yes, in blue,
in foam, with gallops,
it says no, again no.
It cannot stay still,
my name is sea, it repeats
while slamming against rocks
but unable to convince rocks,
then
with seven green tongues
of seven green dogs,
of seven green tigers,
of seven green seas,
it smothers rocks, kisses rocks,
drenches rocks
and slamming its chest,
repeats its name.
O sea, you declare yourself,
O comrade ocean,
don’t waste time and water,
don’t beat yourself up,
help us,
we are lowly
fishermen,
men of the shore,
we’re cold and hungry
and you’re the enemy,
don’t slam so hard,
don’t scream like that,
open your green trunk
and give all of us
on our hands
your silver gifts:
fish every day.

Here in each house,
we all crave it
whether it’s of silver,
crystal or moonlight,
spawn for the poor
kitchens on earth.
Don’t hoard it,
you miser,
coldly rushing like
wet lightning
beneath your waves.
Come, now,
open yourself
and leave it
near our hands,
help us, ocean,
deep green father,
end one day
our earthly poverty.
Let us
harvest your lives’
endless plantation,
your wheat and eggs,
your oxen, your metals,
the wet splendour
and submerged fruits.

Father sea, we know already
what you are called, all
the seagulls circulate
your name on the beaches:
now, behave yourself,
don’t shake you mane,
don’t threaten anyone,
don’t smash against the sky
your beautiful teeth,
ignore for a moment
your glorious history,
give to every man,
to every
woman and to every child,
a fish large or small
every day.
Go out to every street
in the world
and distribute fish
and then
scream,
scream
so all the working poor
could hear you,
so they could say,
sticking their heads
into the mine:
“Here comes the old man sea
to distribute fish.”
And they’ll go back down
into the darkness,
smiling, and on the streets
and in the forests,
men and the earth
will smile
an oceanic smile.
But
if you don’t want it,
if you don’t care for it,
then wait,
wait for us,
we must worry, first
we must try to solve
and straighten out
human affairs,
the biggest problems first,
then all the others,
and then
we’ll enter you,
we’ll chop the waves
with a knife made of fire,
on an electric horse
leaping over foam,
singing
we’ll sink
until we touch the bottom
of your guts,
an atomic thread
will guard your shank,
we’ll plant
in your deep garden
trees
of cement and steel,
we’ll tie
your hands and feet,
on your skin man will walk,
spitting,
yanking in bunches,
building armatures,
mounting and taming you
to dominate your spirit.
All this will occur
when us men
have straighten out
our problem,
the big,
the big problem.
We’ll slowly
solve everything:
we’ll force you, sea,
we’ll force you, earth
perform miracles,
because in our very selves,
in the struggle,
is fish, is bread,
is the miracle.

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 Cat 

The animals were imperfect,
long-tailed,
unfortunate in their heads.
Little by little they

put themselves together,
making themselves a landscape,
acquiring spots, grace, flight.
The cat,
only the cat
appeared complete and proud:
he was born completely finished,
walking alone and knowing what he wanted.

Man wants to be fish or fowl,
the snake would like to have wings
the dog is a disoriented lion,
the engineer would like to be a poet,
the fly studies to be a swift,
the poet tries to imitate the fly,
but the cat
only wants to be a cat
and any cat is a cat
from his whiskers to his tail,
from his hopeful vision of a rat
to the real thing,
from the night to his golden eyes.

There is no unity
like him,
the moon and the flower
do not have such context:
he is just one thing
like the sun or the topaz,
and the elastic line of his contours
is firm and subtle like
the line of a ship's prow.
His yellow eyes
have just one
groove
to coin the gold of night time.

Oh little
emperor without a sphere of influence
conqueror without a country,
smallest living-room tiger, nuptial
sultan of the sky,
of the erotic roof-tiles,
the wind of love
in the storm
you claim
when you pass
and place
four delicate feet
on the ground,
smelling,
distrusting
all that is terrestrial,
because everything
is too unclean
for the immaculate foot of the cat.

Oh independent wild beast
of the house
arrogant
vestige of the night,
lazy, gymnastic
and alien,
very deep cat,
secret policeman
of bedrooms,
insignia
of a
disappeared velvet,
surely there is no
enigma
in your manner,
perhaps you are not a mystery,
everyone knows of you
and you belong
to the least mysterious inhabitant,
perhaps everyone believes it,
everyone believes himself the owner,
proprietor,
uncle
of a cat,
companion,
colleague,
disciple
or friend
of his cat.

Not me.
I do not subscribe.
I do not know the cat.
I know it all, life and its archipelago,
the sea and the incalculable city,
botany,
the gyneceum and its frenzies,
the plus and the minus of mathematics,
the volcanic frauds of the world,
the unreal shell of the crocodile,
the unknown kindness of the fireman,
the blue atavism of the priest,
but I cannot decipher a cat.
My reason slips on his indifference,
his eyes have golden numbers.

Ode to Bread 

Bread,
you rise
from flour,
water
and fire.
Dense or light,
flattened or round,
you duplicate
the mother's
rounded womb,
and earth's
twice-yearly
swelling.
How simple
you are, bread,
and how profound!
You line up
on the baker's
powdered trays
like silverware or plates
or pieces of paper
and suddenly
life washes
over you,
there's the joining of seed
and fire,
and you're growing, growing
all at once
like
hips, mouths, breasts,
mounds of earth,
or people's lives.
The temperature rises, you're overwhelmed
by fullness, the roar
of fertility,
and suddenly
your golden color is fixed.
And when your little wombs
were seeded,
a brown scar
laid its burn the length
of your two halves'
toasted
juncture.
Now,
whole,
you are
mankind's energy,
a miracle often admired,
the will to live itself.

O bread familiar to every mouth,
we will not kneel before you:
men
do no
implore
unclear gods
or obscure angels:
we will make our own bread
out of sea and soil,
we will plant wheat
on our earth and the planets,
bread for every mouth,
for every person,
our daily bread.
Because we plant its seed
and grow it
not for one man
but for all,
there will be enough:
there will be bread
for all the peoples of the earth.
And we will also share with one another
whatever has
the shape and the flavor of bread:
the earth itself,
beauty
and love--
all
taste like bread
and have its shape,
the germination of wheat.
Everything
exists to be shared,
to be freely given,
to multiply.

This is why, bread,
if you flee
from mankind's houses,
if they hide you away
or deny you,
if the greedy man
pimps for you or
the rich man
takes you over,
if the wheat
does not yearn for the furrow and the soil:
then, bread,
we will refuse to pray:
bread
we will refuse to beg.
We will fight for you instead, side by side with the others,
with everyone who knows hunger.
We will go after you
in every river and in the air.
We will divide the entire earth among ourselves
so that you may germinate,
and the earth will go forward
with us:
water, fire, and mankind
fighting at our side.
Crowned
with sheafs of wheat,
we  will win
earth and bread for everyone.
Then
life itself
will have the shape of bread,
deep and simple,
immeasurable and pure.
Every living thing
will have its share
of soil and life,
and the bread we eat each morning,
everyone's daily bread,
will be hallowed
and sacred,
because it will have been won
by the longest and costliest
of human struggles.

This earthly Victory
does not have wings:
she wears bread on her shoulders instead.
Courageously she soars,
setting the world free,
like a baker
born aloft on the wind.

Ode to the Present 

This
present moment,
smooth
as a wooden slab,
this
immaculate hour,
this day
pure
as a new cup
from the past–
no spider web
exists–
with our fingers,
we caress
the present;we cut it
according to our magnitude
we guide
the unfolding of its blossoms.
It is living,
alive–
it contains
nothing
from the unrepairable past,
from the lost past,
it is our
infant,
growing at
this very moment, adorned with
sand, eating from
our hands.
Grab it.
Don’t let it slip away.
Don’t lose it in dreams
or words.
Clutch it.
Tie it,
and order it
to obey you.
Make it a road,
a bell,
a machine,
a kiss, a book,
a caress.
Take a saw to its delicious
wooden
perfume.
And make a chair;
braid its
back;
test it.
Or then, build
a staircase!Yes, a
staircase.
Climb
into
the present,
step
by step,
press your feet
onto the resinous wood
of this moment,
going up,
going up,
not very high,
just so
you repair
the leaky roof.
Don’t go all the way to heaven.
Reach
for apples,
not the clouds.
Let them
fluff through the sky,
skimming passage,
into the past.You
are
your present,
your own apple.
Pick it from
your tree.
Raise it
in your hand.
It’s gleaming,
rich with stars.
Claim it.
Take a luxurious bite
out of the present,
and whistle along the road
of your destiny.

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,
inexhausible,
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.

Ode To The Watermelon (Excerpt)

…the round, magnificent,

star-filled watermelon.

It’s a fruit from the thirst-tree.

It’s the green whale of the summer.

The dry universe

all at once

given dark stars

by this firmament of coolness

lets the swelling

fruit

come down:

its hemispheres open

showing a flag

green, white, red,

that dissolves into

wild rivers, sugar,

delight!

Jewel box of water, phlegmatic

queen

of the fruitshops,

warehouse

of profundity, moon

on earth!

You are pure,

rubies fall apart

in your abundance,

and we

want

to bite into you,

to bury our

face

in you, and

our hair, and

the soul!

When we’re thirsty

we glimpse you

like

a mine or a mountain

of fantastic food,

but

among our longings and our teeth

you change

simply

into cool light

that slips in turn into

spring water

that touched us once

singing.

And that is why

you don’t weigh us down

in the siesta hour

that’s like an oven,

you don’t weigh us down,

you just

go by

and your heart, some cold ember,

turned itself into a single

drop of water.

(translated by Robert Bly)

Your Hands 

When your hands leap
towards mine, love,
what do they bring me in flight?
Why did they stop
at my lips, so suddenly,
why do I know them,
as if once before,
I have touched them,
as if, before being,
they travelled
my forehead, my waist?
Their smoothness came
winging through time,
over the sea and the smoke,
over the Spring,
and when you laid
your hands on my chest
I knew those wings
of the gold doves,
I knew that clay,
and that colour of grain.
The years of my life
have been roadways of searching,
a climbing of stairs,
a crossing of reefs.
Trains hurled me onwards
waters recalled me,
on the surface of grapes
it seemed that I touched you.
Wood, of a sudden,
made contact with you,
the almond-tree summoned
your hidden smoothness,
until both your hands
closed on my chest,
like a pair of wings
ending their flight.

Ode To Poverty

We Are Many

Of the many men whom I am, whom we are,
I cannot settle on a single one.
They are lost to me under the cover of clothing
They have departed for another city.

When everything seems to be set
to show me off as a man of intelligence,
the fool I keep concealed on my person
takes over my talk and occupies my mouth.

On other occasions, I am dozing in the midst
of people of some distinction,
and when I summon my courageous self,
a coward completely unknown to me
swaddles my poor skeleton
in a thousand tiny reservations.

When a stately home bursts into flames,
instead of the fireman I summon,
an arsonist bursts on the scene,
and he is I. There is nothing I can do.
What must I do to distinguish myself?
How can I put myself together?

All the books I read
lionize dazzling hero figures,
brimming with self-assurance.
I die with envy of them;
and, in films where bullets fly on the wind,
I am left in envy of the cowboys,
left admiring even the horses.

But when I call upon my DASHING BEING,
out comes the same OLD LAZY SELF,
and so I never know just WHO I AM,
nor how many I am, nor WHO WE WILL BE BEING.
I would like to be able to touch a bell
and call up my real self, the truly me,
because if I really need my proper self,
I must not allow myself to disappear.

While I am writing, I am far away;
and when I come back, I have already left.
I should like to see if the same thing happens
to other people as it does to me,
to see if as many people are as I am,
and if they seem the same way to themselves.
When this problem has been thoroughly explored,
I am going to school myself so well in things
that, when I try to explain my problems,
I shall speak, not of self, but of geography.