the deep essence of water
Sonnet XXXIV
(Pablo Neruda, trans. Stephen Tapscott)
You are the daughter of the sea, oregano's first cousin.
Swimmer, your body is pure as the water;
cook, your blood is quick as the soil.
Everything you do is full of flowers, rich with the earth.
Your eyes go out toward the water, and the waves rise;
your hands go out to the earth and the seeds swell;
you know the deep essence of water and the earth,
conjoined in you like a formula for clay.
Naiad: cut your body into turquoise pieces,
they will bloom resurrected in the kitchen.
This is how you become everything that lives.
And so at last, you sleep, in the circle of my arms
that push back the shadows so that you can rest--
vegetables, seaweed, herbs: the foam of your dreams.
Notes: It's thanks to LJ that I first heard of Pablo Neruda, actually. As I said yesterday about Rilke -- translation makes all the difference, too. However, with Neruda, his native language is Spanish and I understand enough Spanish to get the gist from reading it in the original.
I highly recommend people try that, too, if you can. For example, there's something about this one, "The Sea," that somehow rings better to me in the Spanish than the English--
Un solo ser, pero no hay sangre.
Una sola caricia, muerte o rosa.
Viene el mar y reúne nuestras vidas
y solo ataca y se reparte y canta
en noche y día y hombre y criatura.
La esencia: fuego y fría: movimientio.
Anyway. I find Neruda's writing very evocative and very earthy as well, somehow. Some works appeal more than others, but at the core -- well, it'll either speak to you or it won't. I found this one while hunting up whitetext entries. Although I never used it, the image stayed with me, and every time I read it, I find something new. Because of that, I'm not going to go into detail about what it is that I see -- I'll leave this one to your own eyes, for you to find your own meaning within.
(Pablo Neruda, trans. Stephen Tapscott)
You are the daughter of the sea, oregano's first cousin.
Swimmer, your body is pure as the water;
cook, your blood is quick as the soil.
Everything you do is full of flowers, rich with the earth.
Your eyes go out toward the water, and the waves rise;
your hands go out to the earth and the seeds swell;
you know the deep essence of water and the earth,
conjoined in you like a formula for clay.
Naiad: cut your body into turquoise pieces,
they will bloom resurrected in the kitchen.
This is how you become everything that lives.
And so at last, you sleep, in the circle of my arms
that push back the shadows so that you can rest--
vegetables, seaweed, herbs: the foam of your dreams.
Notes: It's thanks to LJ that I first heard of Pablo Neruda, actually. As I said yesterday about Rilke -- translation makes all the difference, too. However, with Neruda, his native language is Spanish and I understand enough Spanish to get the gist from reading it in the original.
I highly recommend people try that, too, if you can. For example, there's something about this one, "The Sea," that somehow rings better to me in the Spanish than the English--
Un solo ser, pero no hay sangre.
Una sola caricia, muerte o rosa.
Viene el mar y reúne nuestras vidas
y solo ataca y se reparte y canta
en noche y día y hombre y criatura.
La esencia: fuego y fría: movimientio.
Anyway. I find Neruda's writing very evocative and very earthy as well, somehow. Some works appeal more than others, but at the core -- well, it'll either speak to you or it won't. I found this one while hunting up whitetext entries. Although I never used it, the image stayed with me, and every time I read it, I find something new. Because of that, I'm not going to go into detail about what it is that I see -- I'll leave this one to your own eyes, for you to find your own meaning within.