Neruda's Light
In the midst of so much darkness and light, let's honor a great Chilean poet from a different epoch yet with so much
light
like a green
latticework of branches,
shining
on every leaf,
drifting like clean
white sand.
Now we have such different light, a dearth of clean light now, exceeded only by a dearth of clean white sand. The light that illumined the poetry of Neruda seems so distant from the light that breaks darkness now.
The present is not "as smooth - as a board - and fresh - this hour - this day - as clean - as an untouched glass."
Perhaps Neruda is only a touch of the past. For our present, as we cut it, size it and direct it, "brings nothing from yesterday that can't be redeemed - nothing from the past."
Or perhaps, as Neruda surmised, we're only
step
by step
feet firmly
planted on the wood
of the moment
irrevocably wed to what happens now. Which for me is what we see in the same light, our common ground.
That Light
(my translation which, quite frankly, is a shadow of the original)
The light in Celon gave me life
but was also living death - for to live
in a diamond's intensity
is a lonely vocation for corpses:
a bird made diaphonous, or
a spider webbing the sky, then gone.
Hurt by this island light
I now keep circumspect
as though a beam of distant honey
might suddenly change me into ash.
I arrived more foreign then a puma,
kept a distance, knowing nobody
dreading the occipital light of a paradise
that might alter my brain.
(Light that falls on black clothing
pierces the cloth and all decorum.)
Since then my goal has been
to save each day's nakedness for myself.
Perhaps those who've never strayed
in order to get closer, as I did
can ever understand
nor be as lost as I was,
a carbonized number in the dark.
Since then, only bread and the light.
The soul's light and kitchen light
night light and the light of morning
light under the sheets of a dream
suckled by light,
I live as I must
in my destiny's ruthless lucidity
between desperation and brillance
disowned
by kingdoms that were never mine
The nets that tremble in the light
come up pure from the ocean.
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