Today we remember

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY! Whichever camp you are in: lovers who make this day extra sweet or those who hate those lovers because they are heartbroken and bitter.

Today we remember.

You will remember

Pablo Neruda

You will remember that leaping stream
where sweet aromas rose and trembled,
and sometimes a bird, wearing water
and slowness, its winter feathers.
You will remember those gifts from the earth:
indelible scents, gold clay,
weeds in the thicket and crazy roots,
magical thorns like swords.
You'll remember the bouquet you picked,
shadows and silent water,
bouquet like a foam-covered stone.
That time was like never, and like always.
So we go there, where nothing is waiting;
we find everything waiting there.

Love (Pablo Neruda)

Because of you, in gardens of blossoming flowers I ache from the perfumes of spring.

I have forgotten your face, I no longer remember your hands; how did your lips feel on mine?

Because of you, I love the white statues drowsing in the parks, the white statues that have neither voice nor sight.

I have forgotten your voice, your happy voice; I have forgotten your eyes.

Like a flower to its perfume, I am bound to my vague memory of you. I live with pain that is like a wound; if you touch me, you will do me irreparable harm.

Your caresses enfold me, like climbing vines on melancholy walls.

I have forgotten your love, yet I seem to glimpse you in every window.

Because of you, the heady perfumes of summer pain me; because of you, I again seek out the signs that precipitate desires: shooting stars, falling objects.

Ausencia: Pablo Neruda

Apenas te he dejado,
vas en mi, cristalina
o temblorosa,
o inquieta, herida por mi mismo
o colmada de amor, como cuando tus ojos
se cierran sobre el don de la vida
que sin cesar te entrego.

Amor mio,
nos hemos encontrado
sedientos y nos hemos
bebido toda el agua y la sangre,
nos encontramos
con hambre
y nos mordimos
como el fuego muerde,
dejandonos heridos.

Pero esperame
guardame tu dulzura.
Yo te dare tambien
una rosa.

Day breaks: the whole of yesterday went falling

O tiera, esperame

Return me, oh sun,
to my country destiny,
rain of the ancient woods.
Bring me back its aroma, and the swords
falling from the sky,
the solitary peace of pasture and rock,
the damp at the river margins,
the smell of the larch tree,
the wind alive like a heart
beating in the crowded remoteness
of the towering araucaria.

Earth, give me back your pristine gifts,
towers of silence which rose from
the solemnity of their roots.
I want to go back to being what I haven’t been,
to learn to return from such depths
that among all natural things
I may live or not live.  I don’t mind
being one stone more, the dark stone,
the pure stone that the river bears away.

Pablo Neruda

Bragging and Neruda

I bragged about my Paypal account. 

I am earning some mighty dollars from blogging unknown products I haven’t had the chance to use. 

To put this bragging more of use, I decided to purchase something online. Now that’s cool, isn’t it?

I’ve wanted to own a Neruda book. Now this could do a lot of bragging.

Neruda search online.

There you go.

Basic Anthology of Pablo Neruda.

Only a few dollars. Cool.

I ordered. They don’t do deliveries in the Philippines.

Damn!

I tried another site.

The manager emailed me that they could deliver in the Philippines! I thanked God. He gave me a quotation. I was aghast! My Paypal could not pay the total amount!

I sulked. Sour grapes.

I will just go to Fully Booked and read Neruda from there.

Sweet lemons.

Sonnet LVVI by Pablo Neruda

[This is all for you. No matter what.]

I do not love you--except because I love you;
I go from loving to not loving you,
from waiting to not waiting for you
my heart moves from the cold into the fire.

I love you only because it's you I love;
I hate you no end, and hating you
bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you
is that I do not see you but love you blindly.

Maybe the January light will consume
my heart with its cruel
ray, stealing my key to true calm.

In this part of the story I am the one who
dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,
because I love you, Love, in fire and in blood.

Unpublished Pablo Neruda poems highlight last romance

SANTIAGO (AFP) - - A series of unpublished poems by Chile's late Pablo Neruda, winner of the 1971 Nobel prize for literature, are shedding light on his last romance with his wife's niece more than 40 years his junior, a collector said.

The 14 poems were found in a book titled "Black Island Album," named after the house in central Chile which Neruda, his third and last wife Matilde Urrutia and her niece Alicia Urrutia shared, according to Nurieldin Hermosilla.

The lawyer and Neruda collector said he bought the book recently from a book dealer, who in turn had acquired it from an anonymous seller.

The poems are handwritten in Neruda's traditional green ink and are "a direct and definitive confirmation from the poet's own pen of his love for Alicia," Hermosilla said.

He said Alicia Urrutia decided to go public with the poems after years of keeping silent about her affair.

"I think she decided to confirm her love with Neruda and put this book on sale to lend herself some legitimacy and put an end to the myth" and speculation, the lawyer said.

Neruda, who died at 69 in 1973, just 12 days after dictator Augusto Pinochet's coup, is famous for his love poems as well as his "Canto General" -- an epic poem about South America's history and its people.

But he also was a senior member of the Chilean central committee of the Communist Party and his work was banned during Pinochet's 1973-1990 military dictatorship.

At different periods of his life, Neruda was a political exile, a senator, an ambassador and in 1970 a presidential candidate for the Communist Party.

Neruda's real name was Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. His pen name was inspired by Czech writer Jan Neruda.

Poor Fellows by Pablo Neruda

Inspired by Sir Bob (Bobmaster, in Multiply), I searched for the Neruda poem. Here it is. And I love it.

What it takes on this planet,
to make love to each other in peace.
Everyone pries under your sheets,
everyone interferes with your loving.
They say terrible things about a man and a woman,
who after much milling about,
all sorts of compunctions,
do something unique,
they both lie with each other in one bed.
I ask myself whether frogs are so furtive,
or sneeze as they please.
Whether they whisper to each other in swamps about illegitimate frogs,
or the joys of amphibious living.
I ask myself if birds single out enemy birds,
or bulls gossip with bullocks before they go out in public with cows.
Even the roads have eyes and the parks their police.
Hotels spy on their guests,
windows name names,
canons and squadrons debark on missions to liquidate love.
All those ears and those jaws working incessantly,
till a man and his girl
have to raise their climax,
full tilt,
on a bicycle.