Rich, Sensual, Pregnant: Swollen with visions, verditures, odors, sensations of touch and taste... Quite delicious indeed.

Excellences of animal and plant: His trees have a perfect texture, more real than hugging them, or feeling them with living fingers.

His majesties of cosmic graveyards of ocean, and oceans of cosmic graveyard;
and his perfect perception of Cats:

the cat
intends nothing but cat:
he is cat


And an appreciation of poets:

let the finical sleep
on their sterile divans

while we pore on those curious stones
packed with lusters and riddles

and rise in the green light of dawn
with the desperate trains


I care little for who he was, where he lived, what is his history. All I know is his jungularity, his keen creatures, his lush lovers, and his oceans, tides, seas. His breakers are full on the shore.

šis, vairāk vai mazāk, ir nerudas ne-romantiskākais krājums
bet krūtis viņš mīl kā neko citu!

I’ll give him some credit , he was a big inspiration in the last half year for my own poetry and even inspired Dana to make a twitter bot of daily Neruda poems.

gorgeous - took me a few months of casual-before-bed-reading, but wow. so warm and full of appreciation of daily life. honestly might start re-reading this now.

(great for bringing my spanish back from the dead as well and a wild ride in terms of translation, sometimes it feels like you're reading two different poems that don't always say the same thing, but hey, more poems for me ig!)

Apenas medio puñado de palabras

Terminé hoy con la antología. La selección es amplia, eso es bueno, da perspectiva, posibilidad de asomarse con calma. No conecté del todo con la propuesta de Neruda. Me pareció por momentos miope, por momentos ebrio. La miopía y la ebriedad son los males del siglo. ¿De qué siglo? Qué se yo, de alguno. Quizás vuelva luego para hablar de la "Residencia en la tierra" que es bárbaro, o de "Canto general", que oscila entre la genialidad y el desamparo. No sé. Quizás luego. Hoy me vence el cansancio.

had the honour of reading this beautiful book because a beautiful girl gave me her copy.. Neruda Neruda Neruda..lapping at every letter in every word i couldn’t get enough of his heart and soul pouring into the page. sigh

The wind, the waves and poetry. What should we long more for?

It is a lonely region, I have already spoken
of that region so desolate
where the earth is brim-full of ocean
and there is no one - only tracks of horses,
no one save the wind, no one
only the rain adding to the sea's waters,
no one, only the rain growing over the sea.
*
how huge the night is, how lonely the earth
*
here let us submit to the sea's return, our destiny.

‘ভয়’ - পাবলো নেরুদার একটি বিখ্যাত কবিতা। ‘একটি শীতের ঘটনা’- কবিতায় লিখেছেন- ‘বইগুলোর গায়ে যেন হেমন্ত লেগেছে’। ‘শেষ পর্যন্ত ওরা চলে গেল’- কবিতায় আবিষ্কার করেছেন ‘বন্ধুভাবে শত্রু’ - কেও। স্পেনে থাকা কালে তিনি সমাজ বিপ্লবের ও সমাজ পরিবর্তনের সঙ্গে সামঞ্জস্যপূর্ণ কবিতা লিখতে থাকেন। হয়ে উঠেন গণমানুষের কবি। স্পেনীয় কবি ‘গর্থিয়া লরকা’ গৃহযুদ্ধে নিহত হলে - তার হত্যার প্রতিবাদ করায় তাকে কন্সালের পদ হারাতে হয়। ‘প্রেম’ - কবিতায় নির্দ্বিধায় বলছেন - “কবে, কিভাবে আমার সৌভাগ্যের জন্য প্রতিদান তো ধরে দিতেই হবে”। ‘বই’ কবিতায় - এভাবে উপহাস করছেন সকলকে এ বলে যে, “আমার কবিতাগুলো তারা মুখে দেয়নি, তারা গ্রোগ্রাসে গেলে চটকদার কোন ঘটনা”।

I've been carrying it with me from place to place like one would a Bible. With every re-read, some poems speak to me more than others, depending on my emotional environment, that's why it is not possible to have favourites. Neruda painted this world with words like nobody else.

5 stars for Neruda, 3 stars for the often overwrought English translations by Ben Belitt. So much beauty buried under unnecessary extravagance when the Spanish on the facing page is so crisp and far more enjoyable.

Man loves the sea !!! Me too

Soneto XXIX

Vens da pobreza das casas do Sul,
das regiões duras com frio e terramoto
que quando até os seus deuses rolaram para a morte
nos deram a lição da vida na greda.

És um cavalinho de greda negra, um beijo
de barro escuro, amor, amapola de greda,
pomba do crepúsculo que voou nos caminhos,
cofre com lágrimas da nossa pobre infância.

Môça, conservaste o teu coração de pobre,
os teus pés de pobre acostumados às pedras,
a tua boca que nem sempre teve pão ou delícia.

És do pobre Sul, de onde vem a minha alma:
no seu céu a tua mãe continua lavando roupa
com a minha mãe. Por isso te escolhi , companheira.