Neruda and Vallejo: Selected Poems Read online

en un palo. Sus ojos muertos

  descompusieron su relámpago

  y descendieron por la lanza

  en un goterón de inmundicia

  que desapareció en la tierra.

  THE HEAD ON THE POLE

  Balboa, you brought death and claws

  everywhere into the sweet land

  of Central America, and among those hunting dogs

  your dog was your soul:

  with his bloodstained jowls Lioncub

  picked up the slave escaping,

  sank his Spanish teeth

  into the panting throats;

  pieces of flesh slipped from

  the dogs’ jaws into martyrdom

  and the jewel fell in the pocket.

  A curse on dog and man,

  the horrible howl in the unbroken

  forest, and the stealthy

  walk of the iron and the bandit.

  And a curse on the spiny crown

  of the wild thornbush

  that did not leap like a hedgehog

  to protect the invaded cradle.

  But the justice of knives,

  the bitter branch of envy,

  rose in the darkness

  among the bloody captains.

  And when you got back, the man

  named Pedrarias stood

  in your way like a rope.

  PART III turns to the European discoverers of South America, and the conquistadors. One poem describes Columbus’ first arrival in 1493, and his later arrival at Mexico in 1519. Cortez, Balboa, and Ximenez de Quesada have their own poems; Neruda describes the death of Atahualpa, and the careers of Valdivia and Magellan. The picture he gives of these men is often very different from the images of them in American history books. There are thirty-three poems. We have translated three, the poems on the fall and death of Balboa, on the death of Atahualpa, and on Almagro, the discoverer of Chile.

  They tried you surrounded by the barkings

  of dogs that killed Indians.

  Now you are dying, do you hear

  the pure silence, broken

  by your excited dogs?

  Now you are dying in the hands

  of the stern authorities,

  do you sense the precious aroma

  of the sweet kingdom smashed forever?

  When they cut off Balboa’s

  head, it was stuck up

  on a pole. His dead eyes

  let their lightning rot

  and descended along the pole

  as a large drop of filth

  which disappeared into the earth.

  Translated by Robert Bly

  LAS AGONÍAS

  En Caj amarca empezó la agonía.

  El joven Atahualpa, estambre azul,

  árbol insigne, escuchó al viento

  traer rumor de acero.

  Era un confuso

  brillo y temblor desde la costa,

  un galope increíble

  —piafar y poderío—

  de hierro y hierro entre la hierba.

  Llegaron los adelantados.

  El Inca salió de la música

  rodeado por los señores.

  Las visitas

  de otro planeta, sudadas y barbudas,

  iban a hacer la reverencia.

  El capellán

  Valverde, corazón traidor, chacal podrido,

  adelanta un extraño objeto, un trozo

  de cesto, un fruto

  tal vez de aquel planeta

  de donde vienen los caballos.

  Atahualpa lo toma. No conoce

  de qué se trata: no brilla, no suena,

  y lo deja caer sonriendo.

  “Muerte,

  venganza, matad, que os absuelvo”,

  grita el chacal de la cruz asesina.

  El trueno acude hacia los bandoleros.

  Nuestra sangre en su cuna es derramada.

  Los príncipes rodean como un coro

  al Inca, en la hora agonizante.

  Diez mil peruanos caen

  bajo cruces y espadas, la sangre

  moja las vestiduras de Atahualpa.

  Pizarro, el cerdo cruel de Extremadura

  hace amarrar los delicados brazos

  del Inca. La noche ha descendido

  sobre el Perú como una brasa negra.

  ANGUISH OF DEATH

  In Cajamarca, the anguish of death began.

  The youthful Atahualpa, sky-blue stamen,

  illustrious tree, listened to the wind

  carry the faint murmur of steel.

  There was a confused

  light, an earth-tremor from the coast,

  an unbelievable galloping—

  rearing and power—

  from iron and iron, among the weeds.

  The governors were arriving.

  The Inca came out to the music

  surrounded by his nobles.

  The visitors

  from another planet, sweaty and bearded,

  go to do reverence.

  The chaplain,

  Valverde, treacherous heart, rotten jackal,

  brings forward a strange object, a piece

  of a basket, a fruit,

  perhaps from the same planet from which the horses come.

  Atahualpa takes it. He does not know

  what it is made of ; it doesn’t shine, it makes no noise,

  and he lets it fall, smiling.

  “Death ;

  vengeance, kill, I will absolve you,”

  the jackal of the murderous cross cries out.

  Thunder draws near the robbers.

  Our blood is shed in its cradle.

  The young princes gather like a chorus

  around the Inca, in the hour of the anguish of death.

  Ten thousand Peruvians fell

  under crosses and swords, the blood

  moistened the robes of Atahualpa.

  Pizarro, the cruel hog from western Spain,

  had the slender arms of the Inca

  tied up. Night has now come down

  over Peru like a live coal that is black.

  Translated by James Wright

  DESCUBRIDORES DE CHILE

  Del Norte trajo Almagro su arrugada centella.

  Y sobre el territorio, entre explosión y ocaso,

  se inclinó día y noche como sobre una carta.

  Sombra de espinas, sombra de cardo y cera,

  el español reunido con su seca figura,

  mirando las sombrías estrategias del suelo.

  Noche, nieve y arena hacen la forma

  de mi delgada patria,

  todo el silencio está en su larga línea,

  toda la espuma sale de su barba marina,

  todo el carbón la llena de misteriosos besos.

  Como una brasa el oro arde en sus dedos

  y la plata ilumina como una luna verde

  su endurecida forma de tétrico planeta.

  El español sentado junto a la rosa un día,

  junto al aceite, junto al vino, junto al antiguo cielo

  no imaginó este punto de colérica piedra

  nacer bajo el estiércol del águila marina.

  DISCOVERERS OF CHILE

  Almagro brought his wrinkled lightning down from the north,

  and day and night he bent over this country

  between gunshots and twilight, as if over a letter.

  Shadow of thorn, shadow of thistle and of wax,

  the Spaniard, alone with his dried-up body,

  watching the shadowy tactics of the soil.

  My slim nation has a body made up

  of night, snow, and sand,

  the silence of the world is in its long coast,

  the foam of the world rises from its seaboard,

  the coal of the world fills it with mysterious kisses.

  Gold burns in its finger like a live coal

  and silver lights up like a green moon

  its petrified shadow that’s like a gloomy planet.

&nbs
p; The Spaniard, sitting one day near a rose,

  near oil, near wine, near the primitive sky,

  could not really grasp how this spot of furious stone

  was born beneath the droppings of the ocean eagle.

  Translated by Robert Bly

  PART IV, called “The Liberators” is the longest section in the book, with over fifty poems. It concentrates on the liberations in the various South American countries from the European nations that had colonized them. We have chosen the twenty-eighth poem, on the liberator of Haiti, Toussaint L’Ouverture. There are fine poems also on O’Higgins, Lautaro, San Martin, Bolivar, José Marti, and others.

  TOESSAINT L’OUVERTURE

  Haití de su dulzura enmarañada,

  extrae pétalos patéticos,

  rectitud de jardines, edificios

  de la grandeza, arrulla

  el mar como un abuelo oscuro

  su antigua dignidad de piel y espacio.

  Toussaint L’Ouverture anuda

  la vegetal soberanía,

  la majestad encadenada,

  la sorda voz de los tambores,

  y ataca, cierra el paso, sube,

  ordena, expulsa, desafía

  como un monarca natural,

  hasta que en la red tenebrosa

  cae y lo llevan por los mares

  arrastrado y atropellado

  como el regreso de su raza,

  tirado a la muerte secreta

  de las sentinas y los sótanos.

  Pero en la Isla arden las peñas,

  hablan las ramas escondidas,

  se trasmiten las esperanzas,

  surgen los muros del baluarte.

  La libertad es bosque tuyo,

  oscuro hermano, preserva

  tu memoria de sufrimientos

  y que los héroes pasados

  custodien tu mágica espuma.

  Out of its own tangled sweetness

  Haiti raises mournful petals,

  and elaborate gardens, magnificent

  structures, and rocks the sea

  as a dark grandfather rocks

  his ancient dignity of skin and space.

  Toussaint L’Ouverture knits together

  the vegetable kingdom,

  the majesty chained,

  the monotonous voice of the drums

  and attacks, cuts off retreats, rises,

  orders, expels, defies

  like a natural monarch,

  until he falls into the shadowy net

  and they carry him over the seas,

  dragged along and trampled down

  like the return of his race,

  thrown into the secret death

  of the ship-holds and the cellars.

  But on the island the boulders burn,

  the hidden branches speak,

  hopes are passed on,

  the walls of the fortress rise.

  Liberty is your own forest,

  dark brother, don’t lose

  the memory of your sufferings,

  may the ancestral heroes

  have your magic sea-foam in their keeping.

  Translated by James Wright

  LA UNITED FRUIT CO.

  Cuando sonó la trompeta, estuvo

  todo preparado en la tierra,

  y Jehová repartió el mundo

  a Coca-Cola Inc., Anaconda,

  Ford Motors, y otras entidades:

  la Compañía Frutera Inc.

  se reservó lo más jugoso,

  la costa central de mi tierra,

  la dulce cintura de América.

  Bautizó de nuevo sus tierras

  como “Repúblicas Bananas,”

  y sobre los muertos dormidos,

  sobre los héroes inquietos

  que conquistaron la grandeza,

  la libertad y las banderas,

  estableció la ópera bufa:

  enajenó los albedríos

  regaló coronas de César,

  desenvainó la envidia, atrajo

  la dictadura de las moscas,

  moscas Trujillos, moscas Tachos,

  moscas Carias, moscas Martínez,

  moscas Ubico, moscas húmedas

  de sangre humilde y mermelada,

  moscas borrachas que zumban

  sobre las tumbas populares,

  moscas de circo, sabias moscas

  entendidas en tiranía.

  Entre las moscas sanguinarias

  la Frutera desembarca,

  arrasando el café y las frutas,

  en sus barcos que deslizaron

  como bandejas el tesoro

  de nuestras tierras sumergidas.

  Mientras tanto, por los abismos

  azucarados de los puertos,

  caían indios sepultados

  en el vapor de la mañana:

  un cuerpo rueda, una cosa

  sin nombre, un número caído,

  un racimo de fruta muerta

  derramada en el pudridero.

  THE UNITED FRUIT CO.

  When the trumpet sounded, it was

  all prepared on the earth,

  and Jehovah parceled out the earth

  to Coca-Cola, Inc., Anaconda,

  Ford Motors, and other entities:

  The Fruit Company, Inc.

  reserved for itself the most succulent,

  the central coast of my own land,

  the delicate waist of America.

  It rechristened its territories

  as the “Banana Republics”

  and over the sleeping dead,

  over the restless heroes

  who brought about the greatness,

  the liberty and the flags,

  it established the comic opera:

  abolished the independencies,

  presented crowns of Caesar,

  unsheathed envy, attracted

  the dictatorship of the flies,

  Trujillo flies, Tacho flies,

  Carias flies, Martinez flies,

  Ubico flies, damp flies

  of modest blood and marmalade,

  drunken flies who zoom

  over the ordinary graves,

  circus flies, wise flies

  well trained in tyranny.

  PART v, “The Betrayed Sand,” concentrates on the men who allowed South American nations to fall back to colonialism, this time to the financial colonialism of the United States, and on the men who support United States’ interests today. He mentions the pressure from U.S. companies to keep wages low. He describes especially events in the year 1946, while he was a Senator in Chile. We have chosen one of the poems in the center of the section, on the United Fruit Company.

  Among the bloodthirsty flies

  the Fruit Company lands its ships,

  taking off the coffee and the fruit;

  the treasure of our submerged

  territories flows as though

  on plates into the ships.

  Meanwhile Indians are falling

  into the sugared chasms

  of the harbors, wrapped

  for burial in the mist of the dawn:

  a body rolls, a thing

  that has no name, a fallen cipher,

  a cluster of dead fruit

  thrown down on the dump.

  Translated by Robert Bly

  HAMBRE EN EL SUR

  Veo el sollozo en el carbón de Lota

  y la arrugada sombra del chileno humillado

  picar la amarga veta de la entraña, morir,

  vivir, nacer en la dura ceniza

  agachados, caídos como si el mundo

  entrara así y saliera así

  entre polvo negro, entre llamas,

  y sólo sucediera

  la tos en el invierno, el paso

  de un caballo en el agua negra, donde ha caído

  una hoja de eucaliptus como un cuchillo muerto.

  PART VI, called “America, I Do Not Call Your Name Without Hope,” is made of eighteen curious and oblique poems. The long flowing
narratives we have become used to in Canto General disappear, and we find instead sudden instants the poem holds back in order to look deep into them. The language is resonant and fragrant. The poems describe an instant on horseback in winter, an instant aware of hunger in the coal mines, an instant aware of the mad frustration of Central America, a meeting with some seamen in Valparaiso, an instant in Patagonia with the seals. We have translated four of the poems, including his famous poem on adolescence, the title poem, a poem on hunger, and “Dictators,” with its powerful, oblique language describing the mood of a Latin American country under a dictator.

  HUNGER IN THE SOUTH

  I see the sobbing in the coal at Lota

  and the wrinkled shadow of the beaten-down Chilean

  pick away at the bitter vein in the core, die,

  live, be born in the petrified cinder

  bent over, fallen as if the world

  could arrive like that or leave like that

  among black dust, among flames,

  and all that would come out of it would be

  the cough in winter, the step

  of a horse in the black water, where

  a eucalyptus leaf has fallen like a dead knife.

  Translated by Robert Bly

  JUVENTUD

  Un perfume como una ácida espada

  de ciruelas en un camino,

  los besos del azúcar en los dientes,

  las gotas vitales resbalando en los dedos,

  la dulce pulpa erótica,

  las eras, los pajares, los incitantes

  sitios secretos de las casas anchas,

  los colchones dormidos en el pasado, el agrio valle verde

  mirado desde arriba, desde el vidrio escondido:

  toda la adolescencia mojándose y ardiendo