TUESDAY POEM | BIRD by Pablo Neduda

Artist Unknown

                     BIRD

                     It was passed from one bird to another,

                     the whole gift of the day.
                     The day went from flute to flute,
                     went dressed in vegetation,
                     in flights which opened a tunnel
                     through the wind would pass
                     to where birds were breaking open
                     the dense blue air -
                     and there, night came in.

                     When I returned from so many journeys,
                     I stayed suspended and green
                     between sun and geography -
                     I saw how wings worked,
                     how perfumes are transmitted
                     by feathery telegraph,
                     and from above I saw the path,
                     the springs and the roof tiles,
                     the fishermen at their trades,
                     the trousers of the foam;
                     I saw it all from my green sky.
                     I had no more alphabet
                     than the swallows in their courses,
                     the tiny, shining water
                     of the small bird on fire
                     which dances out of the pollen. 

                     Pablo Neruda

This week on the Tuesday Poem hub, Helen Rickerby has chosen a prose poem I find riveting - 'New Margins' by Joan Fleming.

"On the way home from art school she stopped to shave off a piece of her hair. The skin was new

 under there, soft as soft bristle, a new field of thought. . . "

Please click on the quill. 

TUESDAY POEM | I Need The Sea by Pablo Neruda

                               I need the sea because it teaches me.
                               I don't know if I learn music or awareness,
                               if it's a single wave or its vast existence,
                               or only its harsh voice or its shining one,
                               a suggestion of fishes and ships.
                               The fact is that until I fall asleep,
                               in some magnetic way I move in
                               the university of the waves.

                               Pablo Neruda

I was fortunate to spend time with poet and dear friend Melissa Green in Boston last month. She took me to her favourite second-hand bookstore where we came upon this magnificent book - Pablo Neruda | Absence and Presence. Actually, it was Melissa who picked it up in the 'new arrivals' section; she pressed it into my hands saying, 'You need to take this one home'. What a treasure it is - 'an hypnotic journey'. Neruda's poems are translated by Alastair Reid with photographs by Luis Poirot. "In this book, through Neruda's words, his friends' words, and magnificent photographs, we come to know his magical world, and ultimately the man himself. . . A passionate acquirer, he collected ships in bottles, shells, postcards, ship's figureheads, sextants, clocks, stones, books, hats and more. These objects served as extensions of his imagination, the vocabulary of his poems. . . " (from the book's back cover)

"The houses he collected were turned into original and often whimsical objects in themselves. Luis Poirot's photographs were taken at Neruda's house on the Pacific Ocean and they demonstrate the way in which the poet imbued the house and all it contained with his own vitality, style and imagination." 

(also from this book) Neruda's Self Portrait

"How to present oneself, to seem human yet come out well? As when one looks in the mirror or at a picture, trying for the best angle (surreptitiously), but coming out always the same? Some people stand sideways, others intrude what they want to be, others ask who they are. But the truth is that we are always watchful, lying in wait for ourselves, pointing up only the obvious, concealing the irregularities of our apprenticeships and of time itself. 

But let's get to the nub.

As for me, I have - or see myself as having - a solid nose, small eyes, not much hair on my head, a spreading belly, long legs, broad feet, a yellowish complexion. I am generous with my love, hopeless at counting, clumsy with words; with gentle hands, a slow walk, a rustless heart; enthusiastic about stars, tides, and sea storms; an admirer of scarabs, a sand walker, bored by institutions, a Chilean ever and always, friend to my friends, close-mouthed about my enemies, a dabbler in birds, awkward about the the house, shy in drawing rooms, repentant for no reason, a terrible administrator, an armchair sailor, an ink merchant, discreet with animals, happy under stormy skies, a prowler of markets, withdrawn in libraries, melancholy in the mountains, tireless in forests, slow of answer, witty years after, vulgar all year long, sparkling in my notebook, huge of appetite, a fierce sleeper, at peace when happy, an inspector of night skies, an invisible worker, disorganised, persistent, brave when necessary, cowardly but not to a fault, lazy by vocations, lovable to women, active in suffering, a poet by ill fate, and something of a fool." Pablo Neruda 

This week's editor on the Tuesday Poem hub is Elizabeth Welsh, a freelance academic editor and poet from New Zealand, currently living in and travelling around Europe. Elizabeth has posted Four Paintings - a sequence of poems by Kiri Piahana-Wong, a New Zealander of Māori (Ngāti Ranginui), Chinese and Pākehā (English) ancestry. You can check out Kiri's first collection Night Swimming here. 

*

Today seems to be a day for the sea - either for needing it or finding it in unexpected places. (I am in the sea and the sea's in me?) It's snowing in Dunedin and the flurries have momentarily engulfed both harbour and peninsula. It is  as quiet as a sleeping turtle. I can barely make out the giant (c)old trees at the bottom of my front steps. 

As to the sea - please visit Marylinn Kelly's blog where the magical story of Gloria and The Reading Man (TRM - aka Mr. Apotienne) is unfolding in the most delightful of ways. . . 

". . . From his capacious coat he extracted a postcard, a seascape oil by Turner from the Tate, found tucked within his current volume of borrowed oratory.  I carry the ocean in my pocket, he thought, or it finds me, insistent as the tattooed name of a long-ago love. . . " 

(Can you possibly resist?)

Tuesday Poem - BIRD by Pablo Neruda

                BIRD

                        It was passed from one bird to another,
                        the whole gift of the day.
                        The day went from flute to flute,
                        went dressed in vegetation,
                        in flights which opened a tunnel
                        through the wind would pass
                        to where birds were breaking open
                        the dense blue air -
                        and there, night came in.

                        When I returned from so many journeys,
                        I stayed suspended and green
                        between sun and geography -
                        I saw how wings worked,
                        how perfumes are transmitted
                        by feathery telegraph,
                        and from above I saw the path,
                        the springs and the roof tiles,
                        the fishermen at their trades,
                        the trousers of the foam;
                        I saw it all from my green sky.
                        I had no more alphabet
                        than the swallows in their courses,
                        the tiny, shining water
                        of the small bird on fire
                        which dances out of the pollen. 

                   Pablo Neruda

Tui - photograph by Pippa Howard (my sister who came to Dunedin three weeks ago - first visit in 15 years!)

*

This week's editor on the Tuesday Poem hub is Helen Lowe

with All my life 

by Sarah Broom

                          "So we sat, and the waves

                          crashed in like gifts, or insults. . . "

Birds is my final Tuesday Poem for 2012. What a year it has been: joys juxtaposed with terrors,  madness with miracles. Poetry provides a container for Life in all its crudeness and subtlety. Like music and the visual arts, it has an unsurpassable capacity to be both protest and prayer, rational and lyrical, cerebral and mystical. Poetry is balm. It is shaman. It is connection. And it is healing. 

Heartfelt thanks to Mary McCallum - unfaltering helmsman of our TP boat - for her remarkable dedication not only to poetry but also to us - poets and readers of Tuesday Poems. As far as I know nothing quite like our TP community is to be found 'elsewhere'. Without Mary, TP would not exist. I know I am not alone when I say how much I appreciate her constancy, her generosity of spirit and her zeal. I can't think of a week that's passed when our small community has not received welcome word from dear Mary. Come hell or high water, she is present; witty, humorous, big-hearted and supportive. You are a rare bird, Mary McC! This ecclectic little chorus of critters is singing their appreciation to you. . .  xo 

*

“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act … in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous thing. . . " – Howard Zinn  

Tuesday Poem - Too Many Names by Pablo Neruda

          Too Many Names

            Mondays are meshed with Tuesdays

            and the week with the whole year.

            Time cannot be cut

            with your weary scissors,

            and all the names of the day

            are washed out by the waters of night.

            No one can claim the name of Pedro,

            nobody is Rosa or Maria,

            all of us are dust or sand,

            all of us are rain under rain.

            They have spoken to me of Venezuelas,

            of Chiles and of Paraguays;

            I have no idea what they are saying.

            I know only the skin of the earth

            and I know it is without a name.

            When I lived amongst the roots

            they pleased me more than flowers did,

            and when I spoke to a stone

            it rang like a bell.

            It is so long, the spring

            which goes on all winter.

            Time lost its shoes.

            A year is four centuries.

            When I sleep every night,

            what am I called or not called?

            And when I wake, who am I

            if I was not while I slept?

           This means to say that scarcely

           have we landed into life

           than we come as if new-born;

           let us not fill our mouths

           with so many faltering names,

           with so many sad formallities,

           with so many pompous letters,

           with so much of yours and mine,

           with so much of signing of papers.

           I have a mind to confuse things,

           unite them, bring them to birth,

           mix them up, undress them,

           until the light of the world

           has the oneness of the ocean,

           a generous, vast wholeness,

           a crepitant fragrance.

           Pablo Neruda

One Ocean, One People - Oil on paper - CB

For more Tuesday Poems please click on the quill. 

Tuesday Poem - Keeping Quiet by Pablo Neruda

KEEPING QUIET

Now we will count to twelve

and we will all keep still.

This one time upon the earth,

let's not speak any language,

let's stop for one second,

and not move our arms so much.

It would be a delicious moment,

without hurry, without locomotives,

all of us would be together

in a sudden uneasiness.

The fishermen in the cold sea

would do no harm to the whales

and the peasant gathering salt

would look at his torn hands.

Those who prepare green wars,

wars of gas, wars of fire,

victories without survivors,

would put on clean clothing

and would walk alongside their brothers

in the shade, without doing a thing.

What I want shouldn't be confused

with final inactivity:

life alone is what matters,

I want nothing to do with death.

If we weren't unanimous

about keeping our lives so much in motion,

if we could do nothing for once,

perhaps a great silence would

interrupt this sadness,

this never understanding ourselves

and threatening ourselves with death,

perhaps the earth is teaching us

when everything seems to be dead

and then everything is alive.

Now I will count to twelve

and you keep quiet and I'll go.

Ode to Keeping Quiet by Pablo Neruda

-from Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon 

Translated by Stephen Mitchell

for more Tuesday Poems, please click on the quill. 

This week's editor is Robert Sullivan with Envelope by Anna Jackson

Tuesday Poem - Pablo Neruda

Today being Valentine's Day in the North Western hemisphere (lingering still in the South?), I thought I'd post a favourite love poem - Ode to Things by Pablo Neruda. Having been a collector of odd and unusual things for much of my life, I'm in a process now of shedding and simplifying. This is in part about releasing the past and in part about freeing up space (of the internal and bricks-&-mortar kind). Neruda's poem might at first seem at odds with the process I'm describing, and yet. . . well, I imagine I'll always be passionate about tools and the objects we share our lives with. Birds' eggs, old builder's levels or a rusty ship's chain can bring me to my knees. There is a certain sacredness in these everyday objects, touched as they are by life, imbued as they are with it.

Neruda's Ode to Things seems to me to be more about the beauty of things per se than it is about ownership of them. I love this man - my Valentine's Day declaration?! - for the many ways in which he calls us to attention, exhorts us to appreciate the beauty in a pair of scissors, salt-shakers, a ship, the ocean. . . 

ODE TO THINGS

I have a crazy,

crazy love of things.

I like pliers,

and scissors. 

I love

cups, 

rings,

and bowls – 

not to speak, or course,

of hats.

I love

all things,

not just

the grandest, 

also

the 

infinite-

ly

small – 

thimbles, 

spurs,

plates,

and flower vases.

Oh yes,

the planet 

is sublime!

It’s full of pipes

weaving

hand-held

through tobacco smoke,

and keys

and salt shakers – 

everything,

I mean,

that is made 

by the hand of man, every little thing: 

shapely shoes,

and fabric,

and each new

bloodless birth

of gold,

eyeglasses

carpenter’s nails,

brushes,

clocks, compasses, 

coins, and the so-soft

softness of chairs.

Mankind has 

built 

oh so many

perfect

things!

Built them of wool

and of wood, 

of glass and

of rope: 

remarkable

tables, 

ships, and stairways.

I love

all

things,

not because they are

passionate

or sweet-smelling

but because,

I don’t know,

because

this ocean is yours,

and mine; 

these buttons

and wheels

and little

forgotten

treasures,

fans upon

whose feathers

love has scattered

its blossoms,

glasses, knives and

scissors – 

all bear

the trace

of someone’s fingers

on their handle or surface,

the trace of a distant hand

lost

in the depths of forgetfulness.

I pause in houses,

streets and 

elevators

touching things,

identifying objects

that I secretly covet; 

this one because it rings,

that one because 

it’s as soft

as the softness of a woman’s hip,

that one there for its deep-sea color,

and that one for its velvet feel.

O irrevocable 

river

of things: 

no one can say

that I loved

only

fish, 

or the plants of the jungle and the field, 

that I loved

only

those things that leap and climb, desire, and survive.

It’s not true: 

many things conspired

to tell me the whole story.

Not only did they touch me,

or my hand touched them: 

they were

so close

that they were a part

of my being,

they were so alive with me

that they lived half my life

and will die half my death.

Pablo Neruda

Happy Valentine's Day, beautiful people. 

xo

For more Tuesday Poems, please visit the hub where this week's editor - Australian poet, Catherine Bateson (brand-new to TP - welcome, Catherine!) - features Canadian poet Lorna Crozier's 'Poem For A Hard Time.'