Sublime Blue: Selected Early Odes by Pablo Neruda Read online

  pero

  tu hermoso

  traje de primavera

  es diferente,

  el corazón sube a las ramas,

  el viento mueve el día,

  nada queda

  Ode to Wine

  Wine the color of day,

  color of night,

  wine with purple feet

  or topaz blood,

  wine,

  star-child

  of earth,

  wine smooth

  as a golden sword,

  gentle

  as rumpled velvet,

  encased in the swirl-shell

  of snail,

  amorous, marine,

  there’s never room for you in one cup,

  one song, one man;

  you are choral, gregarious,

  reciprocal, to say the least.

  At times

  you feed on deadly

  memories,

  and on your wave

  we go from grave to grave,

  carver of an icy sepulcher,

  and we weep

  our transitory tears,

  but

  your beautiful

  spring dress

  is quite another matter,

  heart rises through the limbs,

  wind moves the day,

  nothing remains

  dentro de tu alma inmóvil.

  El vino

  mueve la primavera,

  crece como una planta la alegría,

  caen muros,

  peñascos,

  se cierran los abismos,

  nace el canto.

  Oh tú, jarra de vino, en el desierto

  con la sabrosa que amo,

  dijo el viejo poeta.

  Que el cántaro de vino

  al beso del amor sume su beso.

  Amor mio, de pronto

  tu cadera

  es la curva colmada

  de la copa,

  tu pecho es el racimo,

  la luz del alcohol tu cabellera,

  las uvas tus pezones,

  tu ombligo sello puro

  estampado en tu vientre de vasija,

  y tu amor la cascada

  de vino inextinguible,

  la claridad que cae en mis sentidos,

  el esplendor terrestre de la vida.

  Pero no sólo amor,

  beso quemante

  o corazón quemado

  eres, vino de vida,

  sino

  amistad de los seres, transparencia,

  coro de disciplina,

  abundancia de flores.

  in your stilled soul.

  Wine

  stirs spring,

  swells like vegetal joy,

  walls fall back

  and great stones,

  chasms are sealed

  as song is born.

  The ancient poet said,

  Oh you, jug of wine, in the wilderness,

  and I with my sweetheart, my beloved.

  Thus does the flowing wine

  add to the kiss of love

  a kiss of its own.

  My love, your hip

  suddenly

  is the brimming curve

  of the wine glass,

  your breast is the cluster,

  your long tresses luminous with spirits,

  your nipples the grapes,

  your navel the virgin seal stamped

  upon the vessel of your belly,

  and your love is the cascade

  of inextinguishable wine,

  the clarity that illuminates my senses,

  the terrestrial splendor of life.

  But you are not only love,

  the sear of a kiss

  or the blazing heart,

  more than the wine of life,

  for you are also the companionship

  of essences, transparency,

  the choir of discipline,

  the multitudinous flowers.

  Amo sobre una mesa,

  cuando se habla,

  la luz de una botella

  de inteligente vino.

  Que lo beban,

  que recuerden en cada

  gota de oro

  o copa de topacio

  o cuchara de púrpura

  que trabajó el otoño

  hasta llenar de vino las vasijas

  y aprenda el hombre oscuro,

  en el ceremonial de su negocio,

  a recordar la tierra y sus deberes,

  a propagar el cántico del fruto.

  I love it when at table,

  where we are talking,

  the brilliance from a bottle

  of vintner’s genius flashes forth.

  Drink,

  and remember in each

  drop of gold

  or cup of topaz

  or spoonful of purple

  how autumn worked

  to fill the vessels with wine,

  and through the rituals of his concerns

  let the unsung man learn

  how to remember the earth and his obligations,

  how to propagate the canticle of the grape.

  About the Translator

  William Pitt Root’s numerous poetry collections include The Storm and Other Poems, Reasons For Pitt Root. Honors accorded his poetry, which appears in The Atlantic, New Yorker, The Nation, and Poetry, include grants from the Rockefeller and Guggenheim Foundations, and the National Endowment for the Arts; a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford and a United States/United Kingdom Exchange Artist Fellowship. Root’s work, published in twenty languages, has won the Stanley Kunitz Prize and Guy Owen awards, and three Pushcart Prizes.

  Root’s academic career includes periods at Hunter College-CUNY, the University of Montana, Amherst College, Interlochen Arts Academy, New York University, and Distinguished Visiting Writer residencies at Pacific Lutheran and Wichita State Universities. Most recently he has served as the John C. Hodges visiting writer at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He and his wife, poet Pamela Uschuk, live primarily in the West with a cadre of four-legged companions and enjoy traveling widely to teach and read from their works at home and abroad.

  As a child growing up where the Everglades met the Gulf of Mexico, Root often smuggled a radio into his bed nights so he could hear the late night Spanish broadcasts from Havana. “That music came from a part of the universe where people knew how to live their lives far more passionately than anyone I’d ever met. I was mesmerized and heartened by all that energy, all that poetry, as a kid. I still am.”

  Acknowledgments

  Many of these translations first appeared in slightly different versions in the following periodicals and anthologies: Anthology and Yearbook of Magazine Verse, Asheville Poetry Review, CutBank, Historical Mathematics Network Journal, International Virtual Institute for Historical Studies of Mathematics, Mississippi Mud, The Proud Word, and Telescope.

  Wings Press was founded in 1975 by Joanie Whitebird and Joseph F. Lomax, both deceased, as “an informal association of artists and cultural mythologists dedicated to the preservation of the literature of the nation of Texas.” Publisher, editor and designer since 1995, Bryce Milligan is honored to carry on and expand that mission to include the finest in American writing—meaning all of the Americas, without commercial considerations clouding the decision to publish or not to publish.

  Wings Press intends to produce multicultural books, chapbooks, ebooks, recordings and broadsides that enlighten the human spirit and enliven the mind. Everyone ever associated with Wings has been or is a writer, and we know well that writing is a transformational art form capable of changing the world, primarily by allowing us to glimpse something of each other’s souls. We believe that good writing is innovative, insightful, and interesting. But most of all it is honest.

  Likewise, Wings Press is committed to treating the planet itself as a partner. Thus the press uses as much recycled material as possible, from the paper on which the books are printed to the boxes in w
hich they are shipped.

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  Colophon

  This first edition of Sublime Blue: Selected Early Odes of Pablo Neruda, translated by William Pitt Root, has been printed on 55 pound Edwards Brothers Natural Paper containing a high percentage of recycled fiber. Titles have been set in Colonna MT type, the text in Adobe Caslon type. All Wings Press books are designed and produced by Bryce Milligan.

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