Saturday, February 03, 2007

Poem: Pablo Neruda


I've been reading Pablo Neruda again after having not done so for quite some time. I am consistently amazed at the brilliance of his imagery, the depth of his vision. Some of the Love Sonnets are a bit trite and reflect a traditionally acceptable degree of "merging" energy that is essentially unhealthy. However, others transcend the purely relative and approach the Beloved in much the same way Rumi might.

Come With Me, I Said, And No One Knew (VII)

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.


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