by Pablo Neruda
I stood by truth:
to establish light in the land.
I wanted to be common like bread:
so when the struggle came she wouldn’t find me missing.
But here I am with what I loved,
with the solitude I lost:
but by this stone I don’t rest.
The sea works in my silence.
SEAQUAKE
TRANSLATED BY
MARIA JACKETTI & DENNIS MALONEY
Seaquake
The clocks of the sea,
the artichokes,
the blazing money boxes,
the pockets of the sea
full of hands,
the lamps of water,
the shoes and boots
of the ocean,
the mollusks, the sea cucumbers,
the defiant crabs,
certain fish that swim and sigh,
the sea urchins that exit,
the deep sea’s chestnuts,
the ocean’s azure umbrellas,
the broken telegrams,
the waltz over the waves,
the seaquake gives all of this to me.
The waves returned to the Bible:
page by page the water closed:
all anger returned to the sea’s center,
but between my eyes what remains
are the varied and useless treasures
that the sea left me, the ocean’s dismantled love
and shadowy rose.
Touch this harvest:
here my hands worked
the diminutive tombs of salt
destined for being and substances,
ferocious in their livid beauty
in their limestone stigmas,
fugitives,
because they will feed us
and other beings
with so much flowering and devouring light.
What the seaquake left at the door,
the fragile force, the submarine eye,
the blind animals of the wave,
push me into the conflict,
Come! And come! Bid farewell! Oh tempest,
to my tide hidden by the sea.
Cockles spilled on the sand,
slippery arms,
stomachs of water,
armor open at the entrance
of the repetition and the movement,
quills, suction cups, tongues,
little cold bodies,
abused
by the implacable eternity of water,
by the wind’s anger.
Here, being and not being were combined
in radiant and hungry structures:
life burns and death passes,
like a flash of lightning.
I am the only witness
to the electricity and the splendor
that fills the devouring calmness.
The Picoroco
The picoroco imprisoned
in a terrible tower,
extends a blue claw, palpitates,
desperate in the storm.
The picoroco is tender inside its tower:
white as flour of the sea
but no one can reach the secret
of its cold gothic castle.
* Picoroco–A Chilean shellfish
Seaweed
I am the seaweed of the storm
dashed by the surf:
the stirrings of shipwrecks
and the storm’s hands
moved and instructed me:
here you have my cold flowers,
my simulated submission
to the wind’s judgment:
I survive the water,
the salt, the fishermen,
with my elastic latitude,
and my vestments of iodine.
The Sea Urchin
The sea urchin is the sun of the sea,
centrifugal and orange,
full of quills like flames,
made of eggs and iodine.
The sea urchin is like the world:
round, fragile, hidden:
wet, secret, and hostile:
the sea urchin is like love.
Starfish
When the stars in the sky
ignore the firmament
and go off to sleep by day,
the stars of the water greet
the sky buried in the sea
inaugurating the duties
of the new undersea heavens.
Shells
Empty shells of the sand,
that the sea abandoned when it receded,
when the sea left to travel,
to travel through other seas.
The ocean cast off sea shells
polished by its mastery,
whitened by so many kisses
from the waves that left to travel.
Crayfish
Stop! Casual leopards
of the seashore, curved
assailants like rosy swords
from the undersea roughness,
all biting at the same time,
undulating like fever
until they all tumble into the net
and exit dressed in blue
destined for scarlet catastrophe.
Conch Shell
The conch shell awaits the wind
asleep in the sea’s light:
it wants a black-colored voice
that may fill all the distances
like the piano of the powerful,
like God’s horn
for the scholarly books:
it wants to blow away their silence
until the sea immobilizes
their bitter insistence of lead.
Seal
The knot of zoology
is this functional seal
that lives in a sack of rubber
or inside the black light of its skin.
Inside of her,
inherent movements circulate
to the sea’s kingdom
and one sees this enclosed being
in the storm’s gymnasium,
discovering the world encircled
by staircases of ice,
until she gazes at us with
the planet’s most penetrating eyes.
Sea Anenome
The flower of the salty boulder
opens and cancels its crown
by the will of salt
with water’s appetite.
Oh corolla of cold flesh
and vibrating pistils,
widow-anenome, intestine.
Jaiva
The violet-colored crab
lurks in the corner of the sea:
its pincers are the two enigmas:
its appetite is an abyss.
Later its armor agonizes
in a hellish bowl
and now it is nothing more than a rose:
the delectable red rose.
The Bronze Dolphin
If the dolphin fell into the sea
it would sink to the bottom, plummet
with its yellow weight.
Among true fish
it would be a foreign object,
a fish without soul, without language
until the sea would devour it,
gnawing on its bronze pride,
converting it into sand.
Octopus
Octopus, oh blood-colored monk,
the fluttering of your robe
circulates on the salt of the rock
like a satanic slickness.
Oh visceral testimony,
branch of congealed rays,
monarchy’s head
of arms and premonitions:
portrait of the chill,
plural cloud of black rain.
Sun of the Sea
One day at Isla Negra I found
a sun sleeping in the sand,
a centrifugal and central sun
covered with fingers of gold
and windswept needles.
I
picked up the sandy sun
and raised it to the light,
comparing it to the sun in the sky.
They didn’t see each other.
Swordfish
Two marine swordfish
guard the gate of the sea.
They fling it aside
They bring the tide
They fling it wide.
The swordfish are from Iquique,
from the blue ocean
that reaches Vladivostock
and swells at my feet.
The swordfish sentinels
with swords lengthwise
close the door of the sea
and prepare to keep watch
so order doesn’t enter
the ocean’s chaos.
Fish Market
Fish hang by their tails,
the spilled fish shine,
the fish display their silver,
even the crabs still threaten.
On the huge decorated table,
through the submarine scales,
only the body of the sea is missing.
It does not die; it is not for sale.
Farewell to the Offerings of the Sea
Return, return to the sea
from these pages!
Fishes, mollusks, seaweed,
escapees from the cold,
return to the waist
of the Pacific,
to the giddy kiss
of the wave, to the secret
logic of rock.
Oh hidden ones,
naked ones, submerged ones,
slippery ones,
it is the time
of division and separation:
paper reclaims me,
the ink, the inkwells,
the printing presses, the letters,
the illustrations,
the characters and numbers
jumbled in riverbeds from
where
they ambush me: the women,
and the men
want my love, ask for my company,
the children from Petorca,
from Atacama, from Arauco,
from Loncoche,
also want to play with the poet!
A train waits for me, a ship
loaded with apples,
an airplane, a plough,
some thorns.
Goodbye, harvested
fruits of the water, farewell,
imperially dressed
shrimps,
I will return, we will return
to the unity
now interrupted.
I belong to the sand:
I will return to the round sea
and to its flora
and to its fury:
but for now—I’ll wander
whistling
through the streets.
THE AUTHOR
Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) is regarded as the greatest Latin American poet of the 20th century. The breadth, vision, and range of themes in his work are extraordinary. Born in the coastal town of Temuco in southern Chile, he moved to the capital, Santiago, in 1921. His first book was published in 1923, and the next year saw the publication of his famous collection, Twenty Poems of Love and One Song of Despair. During the 1920s and 30s, he served as a diplomat in various locations, culminating with an appointment as ambassador to Spain in 1934. These years of poetic and political development were shattered by the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. Neruda’s poetic style shifted significantly to address the social and political concerns of the war. The result was his collection, Spain in My Heart. He returned to Chile in 1938 and began construction of his house at Isla Negra, where he lived, except for periods of exile, until his death in 1973. The poems in this volume reflect his life at Isla Negra and are taken from three collections: A House in the Sand (Una casa en la arena, 1966,) The Stones of Chile (Las piedras de Chile, 1961), and Seaquake (Maremoto, 1969). Pablo Neruda won the Nobel Prize in 1971.
THE TRANSLATORS
Maria Jacketti is a poet, fiction writer, and translator. She teaches at St. Peter’s College in New Jersey. Her other books of translation include A Gabriela Mistral Reader and three books by Pablo Neruda: Heaven Stones, Neruda’s Garden: An Anthology of Odes, and Ceremonial Songs.
Dennis Maloney is a poet, translator, and landscape architect. His other books of translation include The Landscape of Soria by Antonio Machado, Naked Woman by Juan Ramon Jimenez, Between the Floating Mist: Poems of Ryokan and Tangled Hair: Poems of Yosano Akiko. Several volumes of his own poetry have been published, including The Map is Not the Territory.
Clark M. Zlotchew is a writer, translator, and professor of Spanish at the State University of New York College at Fredonia. His translations include Seven Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges and Falling Through the Cracks, stories by Julio Ricci.
Table of Contents
Cover
Half Title Page
Title Page
Copyright
Isla Negra
The House in the Sand
The Sea
The Key
The Agates
The House
The People
The Names
The Medusa
The Anchor
Love for This Book
The Stones of Chile
Some Words for a Book of Stone
History
The Bull
The Dead Sailor
The Shipwrecked
Solitudes
The Stones of Chile
House
The Blind Statue
Ox
The Harp
Theater of the Gods
The Lion
I Will Return
The Great Stone Table
Where the Thirsty Fell
The Portrait in the Rock
The Ship
The Rugged Ship
The Creation
The Tomb of Victor Hugo on Isla Negra
The Three Ducklings
The Turtle
The Heart of Stone
Air in the Stone
To a Wrinkled Boulder
The Stones and the Birds
To the Traveler
The Tender Bulk
Bird
Stones for Maria
Antarctic Stones
Nothing More
Seaquake
Seaquake
The Picoroco
Seaweed
The Sea Urchin
Starfish
Shells
Crayfish
Conch Shell
Seal
Sea Anenome
Jaiva
The Bronze Dolphin
Octopus
Sun of the Sea
Swordfish
Fish Market
Farewell to the Offerings of the Sea
The Author
The Translators
