Wednesday, February 13, 2008

A Little Neruda for Valentine's Day--I do love him so.



Drunk as drunk on turpentine

From your open kisses,

Your wet body wedged

Between my wet body and the strake

Of our boat that is made of flowers,

Feasted, we guide it - our fingers

Like tallows adorned with yellow metal -

Over the sky's hot rim,

The day's last breath in our sails.

Pinned by the sun between solstice

And equinox, drowsy and tangled together

We drifted for months and woke

With the bitter taste of land on our lips,

Eyelids all sticky, and we longed for lime

And the sound of a rope

Lowering a bucket down its well.

Then,

We came by night to the Fortunate Isles,

And lay like fish

Under the net of our kisses.


Pablo Neruda

2 comments:

jagosaurus said...

I love, love, love his poetry. Besides the work of E. E. Cummings, Neruda's is the only poetry I've ever sought out and purchased for myself.

k said...

I have the book of things that he collected in his life, a big picture book with poetry. Have you seen this? It was a gift to myself one birthday. Anyway, it's one of the things that I'd save in a fire. He collected odd beautiful and fun things. Once a large shoe from a shoestore that his wife said he asked for many many times before receiving. I would like to visit his homes one day.