{"id":1042,"date":"2016-04-07T01:21:20","date_gmt":"2016-04-07T01:21:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theurbanrange.com\/blog\/?p=1042"},"modified":"2016-08-23T22:42:28","modified_gmt":"2016-08-23T22:42:28","slug":"unsung-labor-of-love-my-translation-of-key-cantos-of-nerudas-canto-general","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.theurbanrange.com\/blog\/2016\/04\/unsung-labor-of-love-my-translation-of-key-cantos-of-nerudas-canto-general\/","title":{"rendered":"Labor of Love: My Translation of Key Cantos of Neruda’s Canto General"},"content":{"rendered":"

In my post of Jan 20, 2015, I mentioned that I\u2019d spent the late spring, entire summer, and fall of 2014 translating a lot of Neruda. My translations of cantos from the Canto General–including the entire Heights of Machu Picchu<\/em>–were contributed as input for a project in which I believed they would (and still believe they should) play a key role.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In response to this installment, the leading editor at a press commented, \u201cYou’re a gifted, lyrical translator with a keen sensitivity to\u00a0Neruda’s inner workings. I’m very, very glad that you’re taking this project so much to heart.\u201d Though these are not at all my most recent revisions (they date back to 2014), I am happy to share just a couple of selected samples of that work here:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CANTO GENERAL, first two cantos (Massimilla, summer 2014)<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

CANTO I: \u00a0<\/strong>A LAMP OF EARTH<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Amor America<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Before the wig and the waistcoat,<\/p>\n

there were rivers, arterial rivers:<\/p>\n

there were cordilleras in whose wrinkled wave<\/p>\n

the condor and the snow appeared immobile:<\/p>\n

there was the dampness and thickness, the thunder<\/p>\n

as yet unnamed, the planetary pampas.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Man was earth, vessel, eyelid<\/p>\n

of tremulous mud, a shape in clay,<\/p>\n

he was a Carib vase, Chibcha stone,<\/p>\n

imperial cup or aruacanian quartz.<\/p>\n

He was tender and bloody, but on the moist grip<\/p>\n

of his obsidian blade, the initials of the earth were<\/p>\n

written.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

No one could<\/p>\n

later recall them: the wind<\/p>\n

forgot them, the language of water<\/p>\n

was buried, the code words were lost<\/p>\n

or drowned in silence or blood.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Life itself was not lost, my pastoral brothers.<\/p>\n

But like a savage rose<\/p>\n

a crimson drop fell into the thicket<\/p>\n

and extinguished a lamp of earth.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I am here to relate the history.<\/p>\n

From the peace of the bisons<\/p>\n

to the flailed sands<\/p>\n

at the earth\u2019s southern edge, in the spume<\/p>\n

of the accumulated Antarctic light,<\/p>\n

through the furrows in the precipice<\/p>\n

of shadowy Venezuelan serenity<\/p>\n

I looked for you, my father,<\/p>\n

young warrior of brass and darkness,<\/p>\n

or for you, nuptial verdure, unruly mane,<\/p>\n

maternal alligator, metallic dove.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I, Incan of the loamy soil,<\/p>\n

touched the rock and said:<\/p>\n

Who expects me? I clasped<\/p>\n

a fistful of empty silicate dust.<\/p>\n

But I wandered among Zapotec flowers<\/p>\n

and the light stepping gently as a doe,<\/p>\n

and the green shade fell, sensitive as an eyelid.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

My land without a name, without America<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Equinoctial stamen, purple spear,<\/p>\n

your scent rose up through me, from earthen roots<\/p>\n

to the cup from which I drank, to the slenderest<\/p>\n

word as yet unborn on my lips.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Vegetation<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

To unnumbered nameless lands<\/p>\n

wind dived down from other dominions,<\/p>\n

trailing celestial threads of rain;<\/p>\n

and the god of the impregnated altars<\/p>\n

restored the lives and the flowers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In the fecundity, time grew vast.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The jacaranda uplifted its spume<\/p>\n

of transmarine splendors.<\/p>\n

The araucaria with its bristling lances<\/p>\n

was pure magnitude against the snow,<\/p>\n

the primordial mahogany tree<\/p>\n

distilled blood from its crowning cup,<\/p>\n

and to the south of the larch pines,<\/p>\n

the thunder tree, the red tree,<\/p>\n

the spiny tree, the mother tree,<\/p>\n

the vermillion celba, the gum tree,<\/p>\n

were earthly volume and sound,<\/p>\n

were terrestrial entities.<\/p>\n

A new aroma was propagated,<\/p>\n

passing through the earth\u2019s<\/p>\n

interstices, converting its breath<\/p>\n

to smoke and fragrance:<\/p>\n

wild tobacco lifted<\/p>\n

its rosebush of imaginary air.<\/p>\n

Like a spear tipped<\/p>\n

with fire, corn appeared, and its stature<\/p>\n

was threshed and grew anew,<\/p>\n

disseminating its flour; the dead<\/p>\n

were held beneath its roots,<\/p>\n

and then, from its cradle, it witnessed<\/p>\n

the emergence of the vegetal gods.<\/p>\n

Wrinkle and extension, the seed<\/p>\n

of the wind was dispersed<\/p>\n

over the feathers of the cordillera,<\/p>\n

dense radiance of germinal stalks,<\/p>\n

sightless dawn suckled<\/p>\n

by the earthly unguents<\/p>\n

of relentless rain-drenched latitudes,<\/p>\n

of enshrouded fountainous nights,<\/p>\n

of whispering cisterns of morning.<\/p>\n

And even so, over the llano plains,<\/p>\n

like planetary plates,<\/p>\n

beneath a fresh pueblo of stars,<\/p>\n

the ombu tree, lord of the grasslands, detained<\/p>\n

the susurrous flight of the open air<\/p>\n

and mounted the pampa, subduing it<\/p>\n

with its bridle of reins and roots.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Arboreal America,<\/p>\n

savage bush between the oceans,<\/p>\n

from pole to pole you balanced<\/p>\n

your verdant treasure, your lushness.<\/p>\n

Night germinated<\/p>\n

in cities of sacred seedpods,<\/p>\n

in sonorous timbers,<\/p>\n

extensive leafage that covered<\/p>\n

the germinal stone, the early births.<\/p>\n

Green uterus, seminal American<\/p>\n

savannah, overladen bodega,<\/p>\n

a branch was born, like an island,<\/p>\n

a leaf took the shape of the sword,<\/p>\n

a flower was lightning storm and tentacled medusa,<\/p>\n

a cluster rounded off its outline,<\/p>\n

a root dropped into the tenebrous depth.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

II:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Some Beasts<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It was the twilight of the iguana.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

From its iridescent crest<\/p>\n

its tongue like a dart<\/p>\n

plunged into the vegetation;<\/p>\n

the monastic anteater treaded<\/p>\n

through the jungle on melodious feet.<\/p>\n

The guanaco, thin as oxygen<\/p>\n

in the wide brown heights,<\/p>\n

went walking in his golden boots,<\/p>\n

while the llama widened its innocent<\/p>\n

eyes on the delicacy<\/p>\n

of the dew-pebbled world.<\/p>\n

The monkeys were braiding<\/p>\n

an unendingly erotic thread<\/p>\n

along the high banks of the dawn,<\/p>\n

pulling down walls of pollen<\/p>\n

and startling the violet flight<\/p>\n

of the butterflies of Muzo.<\/p>\n

It was the night of the alligators,<\/p>\n

the pure and swarming night<\/p>\n

of snouts jutting out of the slime,<\/p>\n

and from the somnolent swamps,<\/p>\n

an opaque clamor of scale armor<\/p>\n

returning to its terrestrial origin.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The jaguar touches the leaves<\/p>\n

with its phosphorescent absence;<\/p>\n

the puma running in the branches<\/p>\n

like a predatory fire, while burning<\/p>\n

in him are the alcoholic<\/p>\n

eyes of the jungle.<\/p>\n

Badgers scratch the feet<\/p>\n

of the river, sniff out the nest<\/p>\n

whose palpitating delight<\/p>\n

they\u2019ll attack with scarlet teeth.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And in the depths of the great water,<\/p>\n

like the encircling ring of the earth,<\/p>\n

lies the gigantic anaconda<\/p>\n

covered with ceremonial clay-paint,<\/p>\n

devouring and religious.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

III:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Birds Arrive<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Throughout our land, all was flight.<\/p>\n

Like drops of blood and feathers,<\/p>\n

the cardinals incarnadined<\/p>\n

the Anahuacan aurora.<\/p>\n

The toucan was an adorable<\/p>\n

box of multicolored fruit,<\/p>\n

the hummingbird conserved<\/p>\n

the original sparks of thunderbolts,<\/p>\n

and in the immobile air,<\/p>\n

its miniscule bonfires burned.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The illustrious parrots filled<\/p>\n

the profundity of the foliage<\/p>\n

like ingots of green gold<\/p>\n

freshly extracted from the muck<\/p>\n

of submerged marshlands,<\/p>\n

and from the orbits of their eyes<\/p>\n

yellow ringlets looked out,<\/p>\n

ancient as minerals.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

All the eagles of the atmosphere<\/p>\n

nurtured their bloodthirsty infants<\/p>\n

in the uninhabited azure,<\/p>\n

and soaring over the world<\/p>\n

on carnivorous plumes,<\/p>\n

the condor\u2014royal assassin,<\/p>\n

solitary friar of the sky,<\/p>\n

black talisman of the snow,<\/p>\n

hunting hurricane of falconry.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Out of the fragrant clay,<\/p>\n

the ingenious teacher-bird<\/p>\n

built small sonorous theaters<\/p>\n

where it burst out singing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The nightjars kept<\/p>\n

lavishing their watery cries<\/p>\n

on the banks of the cenotes.<\/p>\n

The aruacan doves built<\/p>\n

rustic nests of brambles<\/p>\n

where they left their regal gifts<\/p>\n

of iridescent eggs.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The southern starling, redolent,<\/p>\n

gentle autumn carpenter,<\/p>\n

displayed its breast spangled<\/p>\n

with a scarlet constellation,<\/p>\n

and the Antarctic sparrow lifted<\/p>\n

the flute it had just fetched<\/p>\n

from the aqueous eternity.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, wet as a water lily,<\/p>\n

the flamingo opened the roseate doors<\/p>\n

of its stained-glass cathedral<\/p>\n

and floated off like the dawn<\/p>\n

far from the stifling rainforest<\/p>\n

where the quetzal dangles its precious<\/p>\n

gems and, the moment<\/p>\n

it awakes, stirs, slides, flashes<\/p>\n

and lets its virgin embers fly.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A maritime mountain moves<\/p>\n

toward the islands, a moon<\/p>\n

of birds flocking south<\/p>\n

over the seething islets<\/p>\n

of Peru.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a living river of shadows,<\/p>\n

a comet of innumerable<\/p>\n

little hearts<\/p>\n

which eclipse the solar world<\/p>\n

like a star with its thick tail<\/p>\n

glittering toward the archipelago.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And at the far edge of the irate<\/p>\n

ocean, in the marine rain,<\/p>\n

wings of the albatross surge up<\/p>\n

like two pillars of salt<\/p>\n

establishing the silence<\/p>\n

between the torrential waterspouts<\/p>\n

with their spacious hierarchy\u2014<\/p>\n

the Order of the Solitaires [solitaries].<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

IV:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Rivers Approach<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Lover of the rivers, lover attacked<\/p>\n

by turquoise water and transparent drops\u2014<\/p>\n

it\u2019s like a tree of veins, your specter<\/p>\n

of a somber goddess who bites apples,<\/p>\n

only then to wake up naked;<\/p>\n

you were tattooed by the rivers,<\/p>\n

and in the soaked heights your head<\/p>\n

filled the world with fresh drops of dew.<\/p>\n

You shook the water in your belt.<\/p>\n

You were shaped of springs<\/p>\n

and lakes glittered in your brow.<\/p>\n

From your maternal thickness you gathered<\/p>\n

the liquid like vital tears,<\/p>\n

and you scratched the riverbeds of sand<\/p>\n

all across the planetary night,<\/p>\n

traversing rough and dilated rocks<\/p>\n

on the path, breaking apart<\/p>\n

the entire geology of salt,<\/p>\n

cutting down forests of compact walls,<\/p>\n

parting the muscles of quartz.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Orinoco<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Orinoco, let me be on your shores<\/p>\n

that hourless hour<\/p>\n

let me go naked, as then,<\/p>\n

and enter your baptismal darkness.<\/p>\n

Orinoco of scarlet water,<\/p>\n

let me plunge my hands so they may return<\/p>\n

to your maternity, to your course,<\/p>\n

river of races, homeland of roots,<\/p>\n

your broad burbling sound, your savage lamina<\/p>\n

comes from where I come, from the poor<\/p>\n

and haughty solitude, from a secret<\/p>\n

like a stream of blood, from a silent<\/p>\n

mother of clay.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Amazon<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Amazon,<\/p>\n

capital of aquatic syllables,<\/p>\n

patriarchal progenitor, you\u2019re<\/p>\n

the secret eternity<\/p>\n

of fecundation;<\/p>\n

like birds, rivers rush to you, covered<\/p>\n

by conflagration-colored pistils,<\/p>\n

the great felled trunks fill you with pueblos of perfume,<\/p>\n

the moon can neither watch nor measure you.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re charged with green sperm<\/p>\n

like a nuptial tree, you\u2019re silvered<\/p>\n

in savage springtime;<\/p>\n

you\u2019re reddened by timbers,<\/p>\n

blue between the moons of the stones,<\/p>\n

wrapped in ferruginous vapor,<\/p>\n

slow as the passage of a planet.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Tequendama<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Tequendama, do you remember<\/p>\n

your lone passage, unwitnessed<\/p>\n

along the heights, your thread<\/p>\n

of solitudes, slender willfulness,<\/p>\n

celestial line, arrow of platinum;<\/p>\n

do you remember, step by step,<\/p>\n

opening walls of gold<\/p>\n

to the point of tumbling from the sky into<\/p>\n

the terrifying theater of empty stone?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CANTO II: THE HEIGHTS OF MACHU PICCHU<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

I<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

From air into air, like an open net,<\/p>\n

I breezed between the streets and the atmosphere, appearing and waving good-bye,<\/p>\n

in the arrival of autumn, with its coinage flickering<\/p>\n

through the leaves, and between the spring and the tasseled grain\u2014<\/p>\n

that which the greatest love, as within a falling glove,<\/p>\n

hands on to us like a large moon.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

(Days of living radiance in bodies exposed<\/p>\n

to the elements: steel converted<\/p>\n

to the silence of acid:<\/p>\n

nights unraveled to the final thread of flour:<\/p>\n

yarns of pollen reaped from the nuptial native land.)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Someone waiting for me among the violins<\/p>\n

discovered a world like a buried tower<\/p>\n

sinking its spiral deeper than all<\/p>\n

the rough sulfur-colored leaves:<\/p>\n

still deeper, into the gold geology,<\/p>\n

like a sword enveloped in meteors,<\/p>\n

I plunged my tender and turbulent hand<\/p>\n

down to the most genital terrestrial territory.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Head first, I entered the deepest waves<\/p>\n

plummeted like a droplet through the sulfuric peace,<\/p>\n

and, like a blind man, returned to the jasmine<\/p>\n

of the spent human spring.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

II<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

From flower to flower, the high seed is passed on,<\/p>\n

and the rock retains its own flower scattered<\/p>\n

in its crushed frock of sand and diamond dust;<\/p>\n

but man crumples the petal of light that he gathers<\/p>\n

from relentless deep-sea springs<\/p>\n

and drills the pulsing metal in his hands.<\/p>\n

And soon, over the sunken card table, between<\/p>\n

the clothes and smoke, like a shuffled number, the soul is left:<\/p>\n

quartz and wakefulness, tears in the ocean<\/p>\n

like pools of cold: but still<\/p>\n

he tortures and kills it on paper, with hate,<\/p>\n

sweeps it under the habitual rug, shreds it<\/p>\n

in the hostile garments of wire.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

No: through the corridors, air, sea, or out on the roads,<\/p>\n

who stands guard over his blood, knifeless<\/p>\n

(like incarnadine poppies)? Anger has exhausted<\/p>\n

the dreary trade of the dealer in souls,<\/p>\n

while, high in the plum tree, the dew<\/p>\n

has for a thousand years been leaving its translucent message<\/p>\n

on the same branch that waits for it, oh heart,<\/p>\n

oh crushed brow among the cavities of autumn!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

How many times, in the wintry streets of a city or on<\/p>\n

a crepuscular bus or boat, or in the denser solitude<\/p>\n

of a night of festivities beneath the sound<\/p>\n

of shadows and bells, in the very den of human pleasure<\/p>\n

I wanted to stop and search for the eternal unfathomable vein<\/p>\n

that I\u2019d once touched in the stone or the lightning unleashed by a kiss.<\/p>\n

(Something in the grain like a yellow history<\/p>\n

of little swelling chests repeating an account<\/p>\n

of unending tenderness in the germinal layers,<\/p>\n

and that, always the same way, is shucked to ivory,<\/p>\n

a diaphanous ghost of home in the water, ringing<\/p>\n

from the lone snowcaps down to the blood-shaded waves.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I could grasp nothing but a bunch of faces or masks<\/p>\n

tossed down like rings of hollow gold,<\/p>\n

like scattered clothing, daughters of a furious fall<\/p>\n

that shook the wretched tree of intimidated races.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I had nowhere to rest my hand,<\/p>\n

no place that (running like the fluid of an impounded fountain,<\/p>\n

or sharp as a nugget of anthracite or glass)<\/p>\n

would have restored the heat or cold of my outstretched palm.<\/p>\n

What was man? In what part of his conversation started<\/p>\n

among shops and whistles\u2014in which of his metallic vibrations<\/p>\n

lived the indestructible, the imperishable life?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

III<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Like corn, the mortal being was husked in the bottomless<\/p>\n

granary of forgotten deeds, miserable events,<\/p>\n

from one o\u2019clock to seven, to eight,<\/p>\n

and not one but many deaths came to each:<\/p>\n

every day a small death\u2014dust, worm, lamp<\/p>\n

snuffed in the outskirts of mud\u2014a small thick-winged death<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

entered into each man like a short lance,<\/p>\n

and man was driven by bread and by the knife,<\/p>\n

the cattle driver: son of the seaports, or dark captain of the plow,<\/p>\n

or rodent of overrun streets:<\/p>\n

all weakened waiting for their death, their brief daily death:<\/p>\n

and the fateful affliction of each day was<\/p>\n

like a black cup from which, trembling, they drank.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

IV<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mighty death beckoned me many times:<\/p>\n

it was like invisible brine in the waves,<\/p>\n

and what its invisible savor disseminated<\/p>\n

was like half-sinking, half-rising heights<\/p>\n

or vast constructions of snowdrift and wind.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I came to the iron edge, to the narrows<\/p>\n

of air, to the burial shroud of farmland and stone,<\/p>\n

to the star-scattered void of the final steps\u2014<\/p>\n

and the wild vertigo of the spiral highway:<\/p>\n

but, oh death, vast sea, you don\u2019t come wave after wave<\/p>\n

but like a gallop of nocturnal clarity<\/p>\n

or like the final tally of night.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

You never came to rummage in your pocket; it wasn\u2019t<\/p>\n

possible for you to visit without your red robe,<\/p>\n

without your dawning carpet of clinging silence:<\/p>\n

without your lofty, buried heritage of tears.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Not in every soul could I love a tree<\/p>\n

with its own little autumn on its shoulders (a death of a thousand leaves),<\/p>\n

all the fraudulent deaths and the resurrections<\/p>\n

out of nowhere\u2014not the earth, not the abyss.<\/p>\n

I tried to swim out into the widest lives,<\/p>\n

the most wide-open river-mouths,<\/p>\n

and when man went denying me bit by bit,<\/p>\n

blocking the pass and the door so I\u2019d never touch<\/p>\n

its wounded nonbeing with my gushing hands,<\/p>\n

then I went by street after street, river after river,<\/p>\n

city after city, and bed after bed,<\/p>\n

and pressed ahead through the desert in my salt mask,<\/p>\n

and there, in the last humiliated hovels\u2014lampless, fireless,<\/p>\n

with no bread, no stone, no silence, alone\u2014<\/p>\n

I rolled on, dying the death that was my own.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

V<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t you, grave death, bird of ferrous feathers<\/p>\n

that the impoverished heir of these hovels<\/p>\n

was carrying between urgent meals, under his loose skin:<\/p>\n

it was rather a poor petal with its severed stem:<\/p>\n

a scintilla of the chest that never entered into battle<\/p>\n

or the sour dewdrop that never trickled down the brow.<\/p>\n

It was what could not resurrect itself, a morsel<\/p>\n

of the small death with neither respite nor territory,<\/p>\n

a bone, a bell perishing from within.<\/p>\n

I raised bandages soaked in iodine, plunged my hands<\/p>\n

into the poor pool of sorrows that were bringing death to an end,<\/p>\n

and I found nothing in the wound but a cold blast<\/p>\n

that penetrated the vague interstices of the spirit.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

VI<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Then, on the ladder of the earth, I clambered<\/p>\n

through the atrocious thicket of forsaken forests<\/p>\n

up to you, Machu Picchu.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Lofty city of stone stairways,<\/p>\n

finally a dwelling where the terrestrial<\/p>\n

did not hide in her night clothes.<\/p>\n

In you, as in two parallel lineages,<\/p>\n

the cradle of lightning and that of man<\/p>\n

rocked together in the bristling wind.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mother of stone, spindrift of the condors.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

High reef of the human aurora.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Trowel abandoned in primordial sand.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This was the dwelling, this is the place:<\/p>\n

Here the large grains of maize swelled<\/p>\n

and fell again like roseate hail.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Here the golden thread spun off the vicuna<\/p>\n

to clothe the loved ones, the barrows, the mothers,<\/p>\n

the king, the prayers, the warriors.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Here the feet of man found rest by night<\/p>\n

beside the feet of the eagle, in the high<\/p>\n

meat-strewn aeries, and at dawn<\/p>\n

they trod thunder-footed through the rarefied fog,<\/p>\n

and touched the soils and the stones<\/p>\n

until they recognized them in the night or in death.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I gaze at the rags and the hands,<\/p>\n

the trickle of water in the sonorous hollow<\/p>\n

the wall softened by the touch of a face<\/p>\n

that with my eyes gazed at the earthly lanterns<\/p>\n

planks: because everything\u2014clothing, skin, pots,<\/p>\n

words, wine, loaves\u2014<\/p>\n

was gone, fallen to earth.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And the air entered with its orange-blossom fingers<\/p>\n

over all the sleeping dead:<\/p>\n

a thousand years of air\u2014months, weeks of air,<\/p>\n

of azure wind, of iron cordillera,<\/p>\n

that were like soft hurricanes of footfalls<\/p>\n

polishing this solitary precinct of the rock.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

VII<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Oh you dead of the lone abysm, shadows of one chasm,<\/p>\n

of such depth, as if rising to the measure<\/p>\n

of your magnitude\u2014<\/p>\n

the true, the most consuming<\/p>\n

death; and from the quarried rocks,<\/p>\n

from the scarlet turrets,<\/p>\n

from the staggered stairways of the aqueducts,<\/p>\n

you tumbled down as in the autumn<\/p>\n

of a single death.<\/p>\n

Today the hollow air no longer cries,<\/p>\n

no longer acquainted with your feet of clay;<\/p>\n

the pitchers that filtered the firmament<\/p>\n

when the blades of a sunburst spilled forth<\/p>\n

are already forgotten;<\/p>\n

and the mighty tree was swallowed<\/p>\n

by fog, struck down by gusts.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Suddenly, from the highest summits, the hand<\/p>\n

that it held up toppled<\/p>\n

to the end of time.<\/p>\n

You are gone now, spidery fingers, delicate<\/p>\n

filaments, interwoven mesh:<\/p>\n

All that you were has dropped away: customs, unraveled<\/p>\n

syllables, masks of resplendent light.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But there was a permanence of stone and word:<\/p>\n

The city like a cup was uplifted in the hands<\/p>\n

of all\u2014the quick, the dead, the silenced\u2014sustained<\/p>\n

by so much death, a wall; out of so much life, a hard blow<\/p>\n

of stone petals: the sempiternal rose, the traveler\u2019s abode,<\/p>\n

this Andean breakwater of glacial colonies.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When the clay-colored hand<\/p>\n

turned to clay, when the diminutive eyelids closed,<\/p>\n

crammed with coarse walls, crowded with castles,<\/p>\n

and when the whole of man lay ensnared in his small hole,<\/p>\n

exactitude remained there, waving like a flag:<\/p>\n

the high site of the human dawn:<\/p>\n

the loftiest vessel ever to contain the silence:<\/p>\n

a life of stone after so many lives.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

VIII<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Climb up with me, American love.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Kiss the secret stones with me.<\/p>\n

The torrential silver of Urubamba<\/p>\n

sends pollen flying to its yellow cup.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Emptiness flies from the creeping vine,<\/p>\n

the petrified plant, the hardened garland<\/p>\n

over the silence of the mountain coffin.<\/p>\n

Come, miniscule life, between the wings<\/p>\n

of the earth, while\u2014cold and crystalline in the pounded air,<\/p>\n

extracting battered emeralds\u2014<\/p>\n

oh wild water, you gush down from the snow.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Love, love, until the sudden night,<\/p>\n

from the reverberant Andean flint<\/p>\n

down to the red knees of the dawn,<\/p>\n

contemplates the blind child of the snow.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Oh, Wilkamayu of resonant threads,<\/p>\n

when you whip your linear thunder<\/p>\n

into white foam, like wounded snow,<\/p>\n

when your precipitous storm-winds<\/p>\n

sing and flagellate, waking up the sky,<\/p>\n

what language do you bring to the ear<\/p>\n

hardly uprooted from your Andean froth?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Who seized the lightning from the cold<\/p>\n

and left it chained in the heights<\/p>\n

divided into glacial tears,<\/p>\n

shaken into choppy rapids<\/p>\n

striking its embattled stamens,<\/p>\n

carried on its warrior bed,<\/p>\n

bounded to its rock-tumbled finality?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What do your injured flashes say?<\/p>\n

Your secret rebel lightning:<\/p>\n

did it once travel thronged with words?<\/p>\n

Who keeps smashing gelid syllables,<\/p>\n

black languages, gold banners,<\/p>\n

fathomless mouths, muffled cries,<\/p>\n

in your tenuous arterial waters?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Who goes reaping floral eyelids<\/p>\n

that arise from the earth to gaze?<\/p>\n

Who hurls down the dead clusters<\/p>\n

that dropped into your cascading hands<\/p>\n

to thresh their threshed night<\/p>\n

into geologic coal?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Who flings down the linking branch?<\/p>\n

Who again entombs the last goodbyes?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Love, love: don\u2019t touch the border,<\/p>\n

don\u2019t worship the sunken head:<\/p>\n

let time fulfill its high stature<\/p>\n

in its salon of broken fountains,<\/p>\n

and, between quick water and the great walls,<\/p>\n

gather the air from the narrow pass,<\/p>\n

the parallel plates of the wind,<\/p>\n

the blind channel of the cordilleras,<\/p>\n

the crude greeting of the dew,<\/p>\n

and climb, flower after flower, through the thicket,<\/p>\n

treading on the serpent hurled from the cliff.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In this precipitous region of crag and forest,<\/p>\n

green stardust, clear jungle,<\/p>\n

the Mantur valley explodes like a living lake<\/p>\n

or like a fresh level of silence.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Come to my very own being, to my dawn,<\/p>\n

up to the crowning solitudes.<\/p>\n

The dead dominion still lives.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And across the Sundial, like a black ship,<\/p>\n

the predatory shadow of the condor crosses.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

IX<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Astral eagle, vineyard in the mist.<\/p>\n

Forsaken bastion, sightless scimitar.<\/p>\n

Star-strung cincture, ceremonial bread.<\/p>\n

Torrential stairway, immeasurable eyelid.<\/p>\n

Triangular tunic, pollen of stone.<\/p>\n

Granite lamp, bread of stone.<\/p>\n

Mineral serpent, rose of stone.<\/p>\n

Sepulchered ship, ocean-source of stone.<\/p>\n

Lunar horse, light of stone.<\/p>\n

Equinoctial quadrant, vapor of stone.<\/p>\n

Ultimate geometry, book of stone,<\/p>\n

Iceberg carved by the squalls,<\/p>\n

Coral of sunken time.<\/p>\n

Rampart smoothed by fingers.<\/p>\n

Ceiling struck by feathers.<\/p>\n

Mirrory branches, thunderous foundations.<\/p>\n

Thrones overturned by creepers.<\/p>\n

Dominion of the ravenous claw.<\/p>\n

Hurricane held high on the slopes.<\/p>\n

Immobile waterfall of turquoise.<\/p>\n

Patriarchic campanile of the slumbering<\/p>\n

Hitching-ring of the horse-broken snows.<\/p>\n

Iron rust draped on statues.<\/p>\n

Inaccessible sealed-off storm.<\/p>\n

Cougar paws, blood-splattered rock.<\/p>\n

Tower of shadow, quarreling snowflakes.<\/p>\n

Night held up on roots and knuckles.<\/p>\n

Window in the fog, indurate pigeon.<\/p>\n

Nocturnal plant, thunderclap statue.<\/p>\n

Essential cordillera, roof of the sea.<\/p>\n

Architecture of lost sky-scavengers.<\/p>\n

Heaven-cord, celestial bee.<\/p>\n

Sanguinary stratum, constructed comet.<\/p>\n

Mineral bubble, moon of bulging quartz.<\/p>\n

Andean serpent, amaranthine forehead.<\/p>\n

Cupola of quietude, purest homeland.<\/p>\n

Sea-bride, tree of cathedrals.<\/p>\n

Branch of salt, black-winged cherry tree.<\/p>\n

Snow-capped teeth, thunder-crack of cold.<\/p>\n

Crater-scored orb, menace of rock.<\/p>\n

Crest of frigidity, activity of the air.<\/p>\n

Volcano of hands, smoke-black cataract.<\/p>\n

Wave of silver, needle-pointer of the hour.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

X<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Stone upon stone, and man, where was he?<\/p>\n

Air upon air, and man, where was he?<\/p>\n

Time after time, and man, where was he?<\/p>\n

Were you also the little broken fragment<\/p>\n

of unfinished man, of the empty eagle<\/p>\n

that above the streets of today, over the old tracks,<\/p>\n

through the leaves of the moribund autumn,<\/p>\n

goes on crushing the soul until it reaches the tomb?<\/p>\n

Poor hand, poor foot, poor life\u2026<\/p>\n

In you, did the days of unthreaded light<\/p>\n

like the rain<\/p>\n

on fiesta banners,<\/p>\n

drop their dark food petal by petal<\/p>\n

into an empty mouth?<\/p>\n

Hunger, coral of man,<\/p>\n

hunger, hidden plant, root of the woodcutters,<\/p>\n

hunger, did the edge of your reef climb<\/p>\n

up to these high plundered towers?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I interrogate you, salt of the pathways:<\/p>\n

show me the spade; allow me, architecture,<\/p>\n

to poke the stone stamens with a little stick,<\/p>\n

climbing all the airborne stairways up to the void,<\/p>\n

scraping away at the heart until I touch man.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Macchu Picchu, did you set<\/p>\n

stone upon stone on a base of rags?<\/p>\n

Coal upon coal, and at the bottom, a tear?<\/p>\n

Fire in the gold, and in that gold, the trembling red<\/p>\n

gout of blood?<\/p>\n

Give me back the slave that you buried!<\/p>\n

Shake the stale bread of the wretched poor<\/p>\n

from the earth; show me the clothes<\/p>\n

of the servant, and his window.<\/p>\n

Tell me how he slept when he was alive.<\/p>\n

Tell me if his dream was hoarse-sounding,<\/p>\n

half-open, like a black cavity<\/p>\n

dug out of fatigue into the wall.<\/p>\n

The wall, the wall! If each floor of stone<\/p>\n

bore down on his sleep, and if he fell<\/p>\n

beneath them, as if under a moon, with his dream!<\/p>\n

Ancient America, drowned newlywed,<\/p>\n

your fingers also,<\/p>\n

upon leaving the jungle for the high void of the gods,<\/p>\n

under the nuptial banners of light and decorum,<\/p>\n

mixing with the thunder of drums and lances,<\/p>\n

also, also your fingers,<\/p>\n

those of the abstract rose and the rimrock of cold, those<\/p>\n

that the blooded chest of the new grain transferred<\/p>\n

to the fabric of radiant matter, up to the hard hollows,<\/p>\n

also, also, buried America, you held in that bottomless depth,<\/p>\n

in your bitter gut, like hunger itself, an eagle?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

XI<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Through the delirious splendor,<\/p>\n

through the night of stone, let me sink my hand<\/p>\n

and within me let the ancient heart of the forgotten one<\/p>\n

beat like a bird that has been imprisoned for a thousand years!<\/p>\n

Today let me forget this joy, which is wider than the ocean,<\/p>\n

because man is wider than the ocean, than its islands,<\/p>\n

and you have to fall into him as into a well to rise from the bottom<\/p>\n

holding a branch of secret water and submerged truths.<\/p>\n

Let me forget, wide rock, powerful proportion,<\/p>\n

transcendent measure, the cornerstones of the hive,<\/p>\n

and from the square, today let me slide<\/p>\n

my hand along the hypotenuse of rough blood and sackcloth.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When, like a red-tinged horseshoe, the fury-driven condor<\/p>\n

batters my temples in the region of his flight,<\/p>\n

and the hurricane of carnivorous plumage sweeps the shady dust<\/p>\n

from the little slanting stairways, I don\u2019t see the soaring beast,<\/p>\n

don\u2019t see the blind scythe of his claws,<\/p>\n

I see the ancient being, the servant, the sleeper<\/p>\n

of the fields; I see a body, a thousand bodies, a man, a thousand women,<\/p>\n

under the black storm-bird, blackened by rain and night,<\/p>\n

and the heavy stone of the statue:<\/p>\n

Juan Stonecutter, son of Wiracocha,<\/p>\n

Juan Coldeater, son of the green star,<\/p>\n

Juan Barefoot, grandson of the turquoise,<\/p>\n

rising to be born with me, my brother.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

XII<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Rise up to be born with me, my brother.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Give me your hand out of the most profound<\/p>\n

reaches of your wide-sown sorrow.<\/p>\n

You will not return from the rocky bottom.<\/p>\n

You will not return from subterranean time,<\/p>\n

You will not return with your hardened voice.<\/p>\n

You will not return with your deep-drilled eyes.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Look at me from the depths of the earth,<\/p>\n

farm laborer, weaver, silent shepherd:<\/p>\n

keeper of the tutelary guanacos:<\/p>\n

mason of the faithless scaffold:<\/p>\n

water-carrier of Andean tears:<\/p>\n

lapidary of crushed [well-worn] fingers:<\/p>\n

farmer trembling over the seed:<\/p>\n

potter fallen into your own clay:<\/p>\n

bring your ancient buried sorrows<\/p>\n

to the cup of this new life.<\/p>\n

Show me your blood and your furrow;<\/p>\n

tell me: here I was whipped<\/p>\n

because the gem didn\u2019t sparkle or the earth<\/p>\n

didn\u2019t yield the stone or the grain on time:<\/p>\n

point out to me the rock on which you fell<\/p>\n

and the wood on which they crucified you;<\/p>\n

spark up the old flints for me,<\/p>\n

the old lamps, the whip-lashes stuck<\/p>\n

to your wounds across the centuries<\/p>\n

and the axes with their glitter of brilliant blood.<\/p>\n

I come to speak for your dead mouth.<\/p>\n

Across the earth [all through the earth], unite<\/p>\n

all the silent dispelled [wasted] lips<\/p>\n

and from the depths, speak to me this whole night long<\/p>\n

as if I were anchored here with you.<\/p>\n

Tell me everything, chain by chain,<\/p>\n

link by link, and step by step;<\/p>\n

sharpen the knives you kept below;<\/p>\n

thrust them in my chest and in my hand,<\/p>\n

like a river of flashing yellow rapids,<\/p>\n

like a river of buried tigers [jaguars? panthers?],<\/p>\n

and let me weep: hours, days, years,<\/p>\n

blind ages, stellar centuries.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Grant me silence, water, hope.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Grant me struggle, iron, volcanoes.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Cling to me, bodies, like magnets.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Hasten to my veins and to my mouth.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Speak through my words and my blood.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my post of Jan 20, 2015, I mentioned that I\u2019d spent the late spring, entire summer, and fall of 2014 translating a lot of Neruda. My translations of cantos from the Canto General–including the entire Heights of Machu Picchu–were contributed as input for a project in which I believed they would (and still believe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.theurbanrange.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.theurbanrange.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.theurbanrange.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.theurbanrange.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.theurbanrange.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1042"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.theurbanrange.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1042\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1063,"href":"http:\/\/www.theurbanrange.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1042\/revisions\/1063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.theurbanrange.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.theurbanrange.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.theurbanrange.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}