A Few Dozen Photos and a Few Poems
Trip Start
Feb 11, 2008
1
13
Trip End
Mar 2008
Porto Alegre, Brazil
Friday, May 2, 2008
http://joshuamarcus.smugmug.com/gallery/4597752_rpHkJ
And now some Neruda poems:
First One::
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.
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.
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,
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?
The Infinite One
Do you see these hands? They have measured
the earth, they have separated
minerals and cereals,
they have made peace and war,
they have demolished the distances
of all the seas and rivers,
and yet,
when the move over you,
little one,
grain of wheat, swallow,
they are weary seeking
the twin doves
that rest or fly in your breast,
they travel the distances of your legs,
they coil in the light of your waist.
For me you are a treasure more laden
with immensity than the sea and its branches
and you are white and blue and spacious like
the earth at vintage time.
In that territory,
from your feet to your brow,
walking, walking, walking,
I shall spend my life.
One of my favorites is "Let The Woodcutter Awaken." It's about North America and it's really long, so I'll copy just a few passages.
West of the Colorado River
there's a place that I love.
I hasten there with everything that transpires
in me pulsing, with all
that I was, that I am, that I uphold.
There are some high red rocks, the wild
air of a thousand hands
made them edified structures.
The blind scarlet rose from the abyss
and these rocks became copper, fire and strength.
America spread out like a buffalo skin,
galloping through the light and clear night,
toward the starry heights,
I drink your cup of green dew
Yes, through acrid Arizona and knotty Wisconsin
to Milwaukee raised against the wind and the snow
or in the flaming swamps of West Palm,
near the pines of Tacoma, the thick
odor of steel in your forests,
I walked mother earth,
blue leaves, waterfall of stones,
hurricanes that shook like all the music,
rivers that prayed like monasteries,
ducks and apples, lands and waters
infinite quietude so that the wheat blossoms.
And another part:
But if you arm your hordes, North America,
to destroy that pure frontier
and bring the butcher from Chicago
to govern the music and the order that we love,
we'll rise from the stones and the air to bite you:
we'll rise from the last window to pour fire on you:
we'll rise from the deepest waves to sting you with spines:
we'll rise from the furrow so that the seed will pound you like a Colombian fist,
we'll rise to deny you bread adn water,
we'll rise to burn you in hell.
So do not set foot, solider,
on sweet France, because we'll be there
so that the verdant vineyards will yield vinegar
and humble girls will show you the spot
where German blood is fresh.
Do not ascend Spain's dry sierras
because every stone will be transformed into fire,
and the brave will fight there for a thousand years:
do not stray amid the olive groves because you'll
never return to Oklahoma, and do not enter
Greece, because even the blood that you're shedding today
will rise from the earth to arrest you.
