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Preguntaréis: Y dónde están las lilas? Y la metafísica cubierta de amapolas? Y la lluvia que a menudo golpeaba sus palabras llenándolas de agujeros y pájaros? Os voy a contar todo lo que me pasa. Yo vivía en un barrio de Madrid, con campanas, con relojes, con árboles. Desde allí se veía el rostro seco de Castilla como un océano de cuero. Mi casa era llamada la casa de las flores, porque por todas partes estallaban geranios: era una bella casa con perros y chiquillos. Raúl, te acuerdas? Te acuerdas, Rafael? Federico, te acuerdas debajo de la tierra, te acuerdas de mi casa con balcones en donde la luz de junio ahogaba flores en tu boca? Hermano, hermano! Todo eran grandes voces, sal de mercaderías, aglomeraciones de pan palpitante, mercados de mi barrio de Argüelles con su estatua como un tintero pálido entre las merluzas: el aceite llegaba a las cucharas, un profundo latido de pies y manos llenaba las calles, metros, litros, esencia aguda de la vida, pescados hacinados, contextura de techos con sol frío en el cual la flecha se fatiga, delirante marfil fino de las patatas, tomates repetidos hasta el mar. Y una mañana todo estaba ardiendo y una mañana las hogueras salían de la tierra devorando seres, y desde entonces fuego, pólvora desde entonces, y desde entonces sangre. Bandidos con aviones y con moros, bandidos con sortijas y duquesas, bandidos con frailes negros bendiciendo venían por el cielo a matar niños, y por las calles la sangre de los niños corría simplemente, como sangre de niños. Chacales que el chacal rechazaría, piedras que el cardo seco mordería escupiendo, víboras que las víboras odiaran! Frente a vosotros he visto la sangre de España levantarse para ahogaros en una sola ola de orgullo y de cuchillos! Generales traidores: mirad mi casa muerta, mirad España rota: pero de cada casa muerta sale metal ardiendo en vez de flores, pero de cada hueco de España sale España, pero de cada niño muerto sale un fusil con ojos, pero de cada crimen nacen balas que os hallarán un día el sitio del corazón. Preguntaréis por qué su poesía no nos habla del sueño, de las hojas, de los grandes volcanes de su país natal? Venid a ver la sangre por las calles, venid a ver la sangre por las calles, venid a ver la sangre por las calles! |
You are going to ask: and where are the lilacs? and the poppy-petalled metaphysics? and the rain repeatedly spattering its words and drilling them full of apertures and birds? I'll tell you all the news. I lived in a suburb, a suburb of Madrid, with bells, and clocks, and trees. From there you could look out over Castille's dry face: a leather ocean. My house was called the house of flowers, because in every cranny geraniums burst: it was a good-looking house with its dogs and children. Remember, Raul? Eh, Rafel? Federico, do you remember from under the ground my balconies on which the light of June drowned flowers in your mouth? Brother, my brother! Everything loud with big voices, the salt of merchandises, pile-ups of palpitating bread, the stalls of my suburb of Arguelles with its statue like a drained inkwell in a swirl of hake: oil flowed into spoons, a deep baying of feet and hands swelled in the streets, metres, litres, the sharp measure of life, stacked-up fish, the texture of roofs with a cold sun in which the weather vane falters, the fine, frenzied ivory of potatoes, wave on wave of tomatoes rolling down the sea. And one morning all that was burning, one morning the bonfires leapt out of the earth devouring human beings -- and from then on fire, gunpowder from then on, and from then on blood. Bandits with planes and Moors, bandits with finger-rings and duchesses, bandits with black friars spattering blessings came through the sky to kill children and the blood of children ran through the streets without fuss, like children's blood. Jackals that the jackals would despise, stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out, vipers that the vipers would abominate! Face to face with you I have seen the blood of Spain tower like a tide to drown you in one wave of pride and knives! Treacherous generals: see my dead house, look at broken Spain: from every house burning metal flows instead of flowers, from every socket of Spain Spain emerges and from every dead child a rifle with eyes, and from every crime bullets are born which will one day find the bull's eye of your hearts. And you'll ask: why doesn't his poetry speak of dreams and leaves and the great volcanoes of his native land? Come and see the blood in the streets, come and see the blood in the streets, come and see the blood in the streets! |
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Pablo Neruda [1904-1973], whose real name is Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. He wrote this poem in 1936 in Spain where he was a Chilean consul, shortly after the murder of his friend, the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca, by Franco's fascists -- known as the Nationalists (they actually forced García Lorca to dig his own grave). Neruda died on September 23, 1973, about two weeks after the "suicide" of Chile's democratically-elected president, Dr. Salvador Allende, when Pinochet's fascist thugs, with the covert assistance of the US CIA, overthrew the legitimate Chilean government and brought about a dictatorial regime based on terror and torture. Like Franco, Pinochet was a "nationalist" and a close friend of the US government. Neruda, like García Lorca, was considered a 'subversive.' Who do you think History will celebrate, Pinochet or Neruda (horror or beauty)? According to Joan Jara (the wife of Chilean folk singer Victor Jara who was tortured, his hands broken (he played the guitar), and eventually killed by the military at the Estadio de Chile), "As we walked through the back streets towards the cemetery, I heard Neruda's poetry being recited by one person after another in the crowd, verse after verse, defying the menace of the uniforms surrounding us; I saw the workers on a building site, standing to attention with their yellow helmets in their hands... Neruda's verses took on an even greater significance as voice after voice took them up, confronting the visible face of fascism." Dr. Salvador Allende, man of honor, justice, compassion -- a people's man -- and Pablo Neruda, a poet who epitomized life and people, did not die in vain. Neither did Victor Jara and countless others. We remember!
Published under the provision of U.S. Code, Title 17, section 107. To find more about Pablo Neruda, please visit: Nobel Foundation http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/neruda.htm http://www.oneworld.org/ni/issue288/reviews.htm Universidad de Chile, Fundación Neruda (in Spanish) English translation by Nathaniel Tarn (American poet, essayist, translator, and editor) in Selected Poems: A Bilingual Edition, by Pablo Neruda. London, Cape, 1970. |