Curse

Furrowed motherland,
I swear that in your ashes
you will be born like a flower of eternal water

I swear that from your mouth of thirst
will come to the air the petals of bread,
the spilt inaugurated flower.

Cursed, cursed, cursed be those
who with an ax and serpent came to your earthly arena,
cursed those who waited for this day to open the door of the dwelling
to the moor and the bandit:
What have you achieved?

Bring,
bring the lamp,
see the soaked earth,
see the blackened little bone eaten by the flames,
the garment of murdered Spain.

--- Pablo Neruda from Spain In Our Hearts (1973) translated by Donald D. Walsh

Su Nombre es Hoy (His Name is Today)

We are guilty of many errors and many faults,
but our worst crime is abandoning the children,
neglecting the fountain of life.

Many of the things we need can wait.
The child cannot.
Right now is the time his bones are being formed,
his blood is being made,
and his senses are being developed.

To him we cannot answer ‘Tomorrow,’
his name is today.

---Gabriela Mistral

La Standard Oil Co

When the drill bored down toward the stony fissures
and plunged its implacable intestine
into the subterranean estates,
and dead years, eyes of the ages,
imprisoned plants’ roots
and scaly systems
became strata of water,
fire shot up through the tubes
transformed into cold liquid,
in the customs house of the heights,
issuing from its world of sinister depth,
it encountered a pale engineer
and a title deed.

However entangled the petroleum’s arteries may be,
however the layers may change their silent site
and move their sovereignty amid the earth’s bowels,
when the fountain gushes its paraffin foliage,
Standard Oil arrived beforehand
with its checks and it guns,
with its governments and its prisoners.

Their obese emperors from New York
are suave smiling assassins
who buy silk, nylon, cigars
petty tyrants and dictators.

They buy countries, people, seas, police, county councils,
distant regions where the poor hoard their corn
like misers their gold:
Standard Oil awakens them,
clothes them in uniforms, designates
which brother is the enemy.
the Paraguayan fights its war,
and the Bolivian wastes away
in the jungle with its machine gun.

A President assassinated for a drop of petroleum,
a million-acre mortgage,
a swift execution on a morning mortal with light, petrified,
a new prison camp for subversives,
in Patagonia, a betrayal, scattered shots
beneath a petroliferous moon,
a subtle change of ministers
in the capital, a whisper
like an oil tide,
and zap, you’ll see
how Standard Oil’s letters shine above the clouds,
above the seas, in your home,
illuminating their dominions.

--- by Pablo Neruda, Canto General, 1940 and Translated by Jack Schmitt

Young Poets

Write as you will
In whatever style you like
Too much blood has run under the bridge
To go on believing
That only one road is right.

In poetry everything is permitted.

With only this condition of course,
You have to improve the blank page.

-- Nicanor Parra

(trans. by Miller Williams)

Can you imprison poetry?

‘While briefly chilled, I want to tell
without vengeance and what’s more with joy
how from my bed in Buenos Aires
the police took me to prison.
It was late, we had just arrived from Chile,
and without saying anything to us
they plundered my friend’s papers,
they offended the house in which I slept,
My wife vented her disdain
but there were orders to be executed
and in a moving car we roved about
the tyrannous black night.
They it was not Peron, it was another,
a new tyrant for Argentina
and by his orders doors opened,
bolt after bolt was unlocked
in order to swallow me, the patios passed,
forty bars and the infirmary,
but still they took me up into a cell,
the most impenetrable and hidden:
only there did they feel protected
from the exhalations of my poetry.’

--- Pablo Neruda

Concert in the Garden

Concert in the Garden

It rained.
The hour is an enormous eye.
Inside it we come and go like reflections.
The river of music
enters my blood.
If I say body, it answers wind.
If I say earth, it answers where?

The world, a double blossom, opens:
sadness of having come,
joy of being here.

I walk lost in my own center.


by Octavio Paz
from The Collected Poems 1957-1987;
Carcanet Press Limited

Concierto en el Jardín

Llovío.
La hora es un ojo inmenso.
En ella andamos como reflejos.
El río de la música
entra en mi sangre.
Si digo: cuerpo, contesta: viento.
Si digo: tierra, contesta: ¿dónde?

Se abre, flor doble, el mundo:
tristeza de haber venido,
alegría de estar aquí.

Ando perdido en mi propio centro.

Octavio Paz

Epilogue

We all live in darkness, kept apart from each other
by walls easily crossed but full of fake doors;
money drawn for light spending on friends or love
......our arguments
about the inexhaustible don't even graze it
just when it's time to start talking again, and take
a different road to get to the same place.

We have to get used to knowing how
to live from day to day, each one on his own,
as in the best of all possible worlds.
Our dreams prove it: we're cut off.

We can feel for each other,
and that's more than enough: that's all, and it's hard
to bring our stories closer together
trimming off from the excess we are,
yo get our minds off the impossible and on the things
.......we have in common,
and not to insist, not to insist too much:
to be a good storyteller who plays his role
between clown and preacher.

- by Enrique Lihn

from The Dark Room and Other Poems; New Directions Books, 1963

The Earth is a Satellite of the Moon

Apollo 2 cost more than Apollo 1
Apollo 1 cost plenty

Apollo 3 cost more than Apollo 2
Apollo 2 cost more than Apollo 1
Apollo 1 cost plenty

Apollo 4 cost more than Apollo 3
Apollo 3 cost more than Apollo 2
Apollo 2 cost more than Apollo 1
Apollo 1 cost plenty

Apollo 8 cost a fortune, but no one minded
because the astronauts were Protestant
they read the Bible from the moon
astounding and delighting every Christian
and on their return Pope Paul VI gave them his blessing.

Apollo 9 cost more than all these put together
including Apollo 1 which cost plenty.

The great-grandparents of the people of Acahualinca were less
hungry than the grandparents.
The great-grandparents died of hunger.
The grandparents of the people of Acahualinca were less
hungry than the parents.
The grandparents died of hunger.
The parents of the people of Acahualinca were less
hungry than the children of the people there.
The parents died of hunger.
The people of Acahualinca are less hungry then the children
of the people there.
The children of the people of Acahaulinca, because of hunger,
are not born
they hunger to be born, only to die of hunger.
Blessed are the poor for they shall inherit the moon.

---Leonel Rugama
translation: Sara Miles, Richard Schaaf & Nancy Weisberg
from: Poetry Like Bread, Curbstone Press, 1994