Chile

PABLO NERUDA

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 of quicksand,

a rustling of salt withdrawing,

the grey cry of sea-birds on the coast.

So, through me, freedom and the sea

will make their answer to the shuttered heart.

Past

We have to discard the past

and, as one builds

floor by floor, window by window,

and the building rises,

so do we go on throwing down

first, broken tiles,

then pompous doors,

until out of the past

dust rises

as if to crash

against the floor,

smoke rises

as if to catch fire,

and each new day

it gleams

like an empty

plate.

There is nothing, there is always nothing.

It has to be filled

with a new, fruitful

space,

then downward

tumbles yesterday

as in a well

falls yesterday’s water,

into the cistern

of all still without voice or fire.

It is difficult to teach bones

to disappear,

to teach eyes

to close

but

we do it

unrealizing.

It was all alive,

alive, alive, alive

like a scarlet fish

but time

passed over its dark cloth

and the flash of the fish

drowned and disappeared.

Water water water

the past goes on falling

still a tangle

of bones

and of roots;

it has been, it has been, and now

memories mean nothing.

Now the heavy eyelid

covers the light of the eye

and what was once living

now no longer lives;

what we were, we are not.

And with words, although the letters

still have transparency and sound,

they change, and the mouth changes;

the same mouth is now another mouth;

they change, lips, skin, circulation;

another being has occupied our skeleton;

what once was in us now is not.

It has gone, but if the call, we reply;

“I am here,” knowing we are not,

that what once was, was and is lost,

is lost in the past, and now will not return.

Your voice Peels

You sing, and your voice peels the husk

of the day’s grain, your song with the sun and sky,

the pine trees speak with their green tongue:

all the birds of the winter whistle.

The sea fills its cellar with footfalls,

with bells, chains, whimpers,

the tools and the metals jangle,

wheels of the caravan creak.

But I hear only your voice, your voice

soars with the zing and precision of an arrow,

it drops with the gravity of rain,

your voice scatters the highest swords

and returns with its cargo of violets:

it accompanies me through the sky.