Greeting
The sun rounds the sky,
a bulb hiding its light,
a yellow gillyflower—
blue and red and white—
more common than country,
more reliable than anthrax,
extensive as stone. Why, mad
as the west wind, do we do it?
Why do we grow, why our colors—
we are hot, we are rational—
that’s what we tell the stars
before we must read them.
Narrative magazine, online and print editions, Spring 2009
He Who Sang Will Sing
I am called Pablo, owing to the Art of the Word,
I, the first one, am the son of Rosa and José.
I am called Pablo, owing to the Art of the Word,
and I must lay before you my injustices:
the debts that I did not repay to myself.
It so happens that once, when I was not yet born,
when perhaps I was not or was not yet assigned
a body, uncertain
between nonbeing and eyes that open,
between stories of chaos, in the struggle
between matter and rising light,
what I had of life was a wavering,
I was alive without intention,
I was dead without yet being born,
and between walls that were shuddering
I entered the darkness to live.
That is why I ask forgiveness for the sadness
of my cheerful blunders,
of my somber dreams,
sorry, everyone, for my being useless:
I did not reach out to use my hands
in the carpentry shops or in the forest.
I lived in an epoch radiant and filthy,
I wandered over industrial waves
eating the ashes of the dead
and so often when I wanted to speak with God
or with a general, to help them understand us,
they all had left with their doors:
I had nowhere to turn except to my song.
I sing, I sang, singing
I made up numbers
for you to add, you who live your lives
adding,
and for you bottomliners
so you might subtract everything,
after so much surviving
I have grown used to dying more than one death.
Pablo Neruda, translated by William O’Daly,
from The Hands of Day, Copper Canyon Press, 2008
Mysterious Figure
Is God a girl? you asked as we climbed
the Coast Range, your taste for iron and salt
expanding beyond your 1,875th day.
Do numbers go forever? Our small car
rounded a curve
and caught sight of the shimmering sea.
If numbers keep going, there must be a day-itty.
You said it that way, your cheeks the color
of apricots, beautiful mind hungry
as one bee—no cloud, no chord, no stone,
no poem can ever be like yours. Today,
mysterious figure we never dreamed, you blow
on your alto saxophone
lonely numerals with love,
numbers that have no other.
Let the tender hands of the clock
turn the pages, and raise your family of notes.
Life moves with sweet intensity,
blossoms geometrically,
as your fingers discover twilight. We blow a kiss
to the mystery of who you are,
and our lips touch infinity, this small world—
all the rest, rumors in the grass.
You play the wind without fear, listen
for the rain and take flight
with the ferocity of one drawn to song,
sculpting your own Greek isle.
With each breath you seek an omnipotent being
to whom power means nothing,
a heaven that has no need of honey.
Forthcoming in CutBank magazine, Spring 2010
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