The Month of June, poem by Pablo Neruda

THE MONTH OF JUNE
by Pablo Neruda

Green was the silence, 
wet was the light
the month of June
trembled like a butterfly. 

SOURCE: 100 Love Sonnets by Pablo Neruda

IMAGE: “Little Butterfly” by Angela Doelling. Prints available at fineartamerica.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) was the pen name of the Chilean poet, diplomat and politician Neftali Ricardo ReyesBasoalto. He chose his pseudonym after Czech poet Jan Neruda. In 1971, Pablo Neruda won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Neruda often wrote in green ink because it was his personal symbol of desire and hope. Gabriel García Márquez called him “the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language.”

Ode to Ironing, poem by Pablo Neruda

ODE TO IRONING
by Pablo Neruda

Poetry is white:
it comes from water swathed in drops,
it wrinkles and gathers,
this planet’s skin has to spread out,
the sea’s whiteness has to be ironed out,
and the hands keep moving,
the sacred surfaces get smoothed,
and things are done this way:
the hands make the world every day,
fire conjoins with steel,
linen, canvas, and cotton arrive
from the scuffles in the laundries,
and from light a dove is born:
chastity returns out of the foam.

Translated from the Spanish by Ilan Stavans.

Ode to Enchanted Light, poem by Pablo Neruda

ODE TO ENCHANTED LIGHT
by Pablo Neruda

Under the trees light
has dropped from the top of the sky,
light
like a green
latticework of branches,
shining
on every leaf,
drifting down like clean
white sand.

A cicada sends
its sawing song
high into the empty air.

The world is
a glass overflowing
with water.

PAINTING: “A Ray of Light,” watercolor by Derek Collins, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Prints available at etsy.com.

Play Time, quote by Pablo Neruda

“A child who does not play is not a child, but the man who does not play has lost forever the child who lived in him and whom he will miss terribly.” PABLO NERUDA

Illustration: Wall Art in Valparaiso, Chile — photo by Janet Rudolph, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Ode to the Present, poem by Pablo Neruda

ODE TO THE PRESENT
by Pablo Neruda

This
present moment,
smooth
as a wooden slab,
this
immaculate hour,
this day
pure
as a new cup
from the past–
no spider web
exists–
with our fingers,
we caress
the present; we cut it
according to our magnitude
we guide
the unfolding of its blossoms.
It is living,
alive–
it contains
nothing
from the unrepairable past,
from the lost past,
it is our
infant,
growing at
this very moment, adorned with
sand, eating from
our hands.
Grab it.
Don’t let it slip away.
Don’t lose it in dreams
or words.
Clutch it.
Tie it,
and order it
to obey you.
Make it a road,
a bell,
a machine,
a kiss, a book,
a caress.
Take a saw to its delicious
wooden
perfume.
And make a chair;
braid its
back;
test it.
Or then, build
a staircase! Yes, a
staircase.
Climb
into
the present,
step
by step,
press your feet
onto the resinous wood
of this moment,
going up,
going up,
not very high,
just so
you repair
the leaky roof.
Don’t go all the way to heaven.
Reach
for apples,
not the clouds.
Let them
fluff through the sky,
skimming passage,
into the past. You
are
your present,
your own apple.
Pick it from
your tree.
Raise it
in your hand.
It’s gleaming,
rich with stars.
Claim it.
Take a luxurious bite
out of the present,
and whistle along the road
of your destiny.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) was the pen name of the Chilean poet, diplomat and politician Neftali Ricardo ReyesBasoalto. He chose his pseudonym after Czech poet Jan Neruda. In 1971, Pablo Neruda won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Neruda often wrote in green ink because it was his personal symbol of desire and hope. Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez called him “the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language.” (Source: Wikipedia)

Illustration: “Apple Abstract” by Susana Fernandez, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Skytones, poem by Pablo Neruda

SKYTONES (Section X)
Poem by Pablo Neruda

I invite you to topaz,
to the yellow
hive in the stone,
the bees,
and the lump of honey
in the topaz
to the gold day
and the familial
drone of tranquility:
here is a minimal
church, built in a flower
as the bee builds, as
the planes of the sun or the leaf
in autumn’s yellowest profundity,
a tree, incandescently
rising, beam over beam, a sunburst corolla,
insect and honey and autumn, all
transformed by the salts of the sun:
essence of honey, the tremulous world
and the wheat of the sky
that labored to accomplish
this sun-change, at rest in the pallor of topaz.

Painting: “Wheatfield with Reaper” (1889) by Vincent van Gogh

Aqua Vita, poem by Dale Sprowl

AQUA VITA
by Dale Sprowl

A color of aqua lives,
fantastically far from real;
Once I saw it behind Pablo Neruda’s house
in a dream,
a stripe of Chilean ocean, cool and green.
Another time,
though this one real,
I saw it at the beach on Aruba,
Blown with racing winds,
sea over shallow white sand
pale as a pool.
Once I found it in nature
as I stared down at ice floes on Greenland,
white chunks cut into black lake,
each framed by numinous liquid refreshment.

And another time I saw it.
Would you call it real or not?
In Vincent’s sky in “The White Orchard.”
When I saw it,
I wept,
uncontained,
until I saw it again in “The Plow”
and knew I was at home there.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Dale Sprowl teaches writing at Biola University in La Mirada, California. During summers, she administrates and teaches at the Young Writer’s Project at UCI. Her work with the UCI Writing Project began in 1981, and she has contributed to the UCIWP texts on the teaching of writing. Her first chapbook of poems, The Colors of Water, published by Finishing Line Press in 2007, and her second chapbook, Moon Over Continent’s Edge (2009), have been nominated for a California Book Award. Her poems have also appeared in PEARL, Fire, A New Song, Ancient Paths, and Knowing Stones: Poems of Exotic Places. She earned her bachelor’s degree in humanities and in history as well as a master’s degree in history from Pepperdine University. An Educator Associate for the American Psychoanalytic Association, she lives in Newport Beach, California, with her husband.

“Aqua Vita” and other poetry by Dale Sprowl appears in the Silver Birch Press Green Anthology, a collection of poetry & prose from authors around the world — available at Amazon.com.

Painting: “The White Orchard” by Vincent van Gogh (1888)

Keeping Quiet, poem by Pablo Neruda

KEEPING QUIET (Excerpts)

by Pablo Neruda

Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.

For once on the face of the earth
let’s not speak in any language,
let’s stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines,
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Fishermen in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would look at his hurt hands…

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves…

Now I’ll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.

Photo: “#12 Cloud” by J-Me, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Bird, poem by Pablo Neruda

BIRD
By Pablo Neruda

It was passed from one bird to another,

the whole gift of the day.

The day went from flute to flute,

went dressed in vegetation,

in flights which opened a tunnel

through the wind would pass

to where birds were breaking open

the dense blue air –
and there, night came in.


 
When I returned from so many journeys,

I stayed suspended and green

between sun and geography –
I saw how wings worked,

how perfumes are transmitted

by feathery telegraph,

and from above I saw the path,

the springs and the roof tiles,

the fishermen at their trades,

the trousers of the foam;

I saw it all from my green sky.

I had no more alphabet

than the swallows in their courses,

the tiny, shining water

of the small bird on fire

which dances out of the pollen.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Pablo Neruda (1904 – 1973) was the pen name of the Chilean poet, diplomat, and politician Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. He chose his pen name after Czech poet Jan Neruda. In 1971, Neruda won the Nobel Prize for Literature. (Read more aboutPablo Neruda at wikipedia.org.)

Photo: “My Dreams Are Flying Away” by Marysia

My Dog…poem by Pablo Neruda

MY DOG…(Excerpts)
Poem by Pablo Neruda

… my dog used to gaze at me,
paying me the attention I need,
the attention required
to make a vain person like me understand
that, being a dog, he was wasting time,
but, with those eyes so much purer than mine,
he’d keep on gazing at me
with a look that reserved for me alone
all his sweet and shaggy life,
always near me, never troubling me,
and asking nothing.

Ai, how many times have I envied his tail
as we walked together on the shores of the sea
in the lonely winter of Isla Negra
where the wintering birds filled the sky
and my hairy dog was jumping about
full of the voltage of the sea’s movement:
my wandering dog, sniffing away
with his golden tail held high,
face to face with the ocean’s spray.

Joyful, joyful, joyful,
as only dogs know how to be happy
with only the autonomy
of their shameless spirit…

Note on the Author: A native of Chile, Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. Novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez called Neruda, “The greatest poet of the 20th century in any language.”