by Pablo Neruda
y allí también una vida, una sólida, sutil, aguda vida
sin temblar permanece, aguardando y actuando.
En mis pies cosquillosos,
y duros como el sol, y abiertos como flores,
y perpetuos, magníficos soldados
en la guerra gris del espacio,
todo termina, la vida termina definitivamente en mis pics,
lo extranjero y lo hostil allí comienza:
los nombres del mundo, lo fronterizo y lo remoto,
lo sustantivo y lo adjetivo que no caben en mi corazón
con densa y fría constancia allí se originan.
Siempre,
productos manufacturados, mcdias, zapatos,
o simplemente aire infìnito,
habrá entre mis pies y la tierra
extremando lo aislado y lo solitario de mi ser,
algo tenazmente supuesto entre mi vida y la tierra,
algo abiertamente invencible y enemigo.
RITUAL OF MY LEGS
For a long time I have stayed looking at my long legs,
with infinite and curious tenderness, with my accustomed passion,
as if they had been the legs of a divine woman,
deeply sunk in the abyss of my thorax:
and, to tell the truth, when time, when time passes
over the earth, over the roof, over my impure head,
and it passes, time passes, and in my bed I do not feel at night
that a woman is breathing sleeping naked and at my side,
then strange, dark things take the place of the absent one,
vicious, melancholy thoughts
sow heavy possibilities in my bedroom,
and so, then, I look at my legs as if they belonged to
another body
and were stuck strongly and gently to my insides.
Like stems or feminine adorable things,
from the knees they rise, cylindrical and thick,
with a disturbed and compact material of existence:
like brutal, thick goddess arms,
like trees monstrously dressed as human beings,
like fatal, immense lips thirsty and tranquil,
they are, there, the best part of my body:
the entirely substantial part, without complicated content
of senses or tracheas or intestines or ganglia:
nothing but the pure, the sweet, and the thick part of my
own life,
nothing but form and volume existing,
guarding life, nevertheless, in a complete way.
People cross through the world nowadays
scarcely remembering that they possess a body and life within it,
and there is fear, in the world there is fear of the words that
designate the body,
and one talks favorably of clothes,
it is possible to speak of trousers, of suits,
and of women’s underwear (of “ladies’” stockings and garters)
as if the articles and the suits went completely empty through
the streets
and a dark and obscene clothes closet occupied the world.
Suits have existence, color, form, design,
and a profound place in our myths, too much of a place,
there is too much furniture and there are too many rooms in
the world
and my body lives downcast among and beneath so many things,
with an obsession of slavery and chains.
Well, my knees, like knots,
private, functional, evident,
separate neatly the halves of my legs:
and really two different worlds, two different sexes
are not so different as the two halves of my legs.
From the knee to the foot a hard form,
mineral, coldly useful, appears,
a creature of bone and persistence,
and the ankles are now nothing but the naked purpose,
exactitude and necessity definitively disposed.
Without sensuality, short and hard, and masculine,
my legs exist, there, and endowed
with muscular groups like complementary animals,
and there too a life, a solid, subtle, sharp life
endures without trembling, waiting and performing.
At my feet ticklish
and hard like the sun, and open like flowers,
and perpetual, magnificent soldiers
in the gray war of space,
everything ends, life definitively ends at my feet,
what is foreign and hostile begins there:
the names of the world, the frontier and the remote,
the substantive and the adjectival too great for my heart
originate there with dense and cold constancy.
Always,
manufactured products, socks, shoes,
or simply infinite air,
there will be between my feet and the earth
stressing the isolated and solitary part of my being,
something tenaciously involved between my life and the earth,
something openly unconquerable and unfriendly.
EL FANTASMA DEL BUQUE DE CARGA
Distancia refugiada sobre tubos de espuma,
sal en rituales olas y órdenes definidos,
y un olor y rumor de buque viejo,
de podridas maderas y hierros averiados,
y fatigadas máquinas que aúllan y lloran
empujando la proa, pateando los costados,
mascando lamentos, tragando y tragando distancias,
haciendo un ruido de agrias aguas sobre las agrias aguas,
moviendo el viejo buque sobre las viejas aguas.
Bodegas interiores, túneles crepusculares
que el día intermitente de los puertos visita:
sacos, sacos que un dios sombrío ha acumulado
como animales grises, redondos y sin ojos,
con dulces orejas grises,
y vientres estimables llenos de trigo o copra,
sensitivas barrigas de mujeres encinta,
pobremente vestidas de gris, pacientemente
esperando en la sombra de un doloroso cine.
Las aguas exteriores de repente
se oyen pasar, corriendo como un caballo opaco,
con un ruido de pies de caballo en el agua,
rápidas, sumergiéndose otra vez en las aguas.
Nada más hay entonces que el tiempo en las cabinas:
el tiempo en el desventurado comedor solitario,
inmóvil y visible como una gran desgracia.
Olor de cuero y tela densamente gastados,
y cebollas, y aceite, y aún más,
olor de alguien flotando en los rincones del buque,
olor de alguien sin nombre
que baja como una ola de aire las escalas,
y cruza corredores con su cuerpo ausente,
y observa con sus ojos que la muerte preserva.
Observa con sus ojos sin color, sin mirada,
lento, y pasa temblando, sin presencia ni sombra:
los sonidos lo arrugan, las cosas lo traspasan,
su transparencia hace brillar las sillas sucias.
Quién es ese fantasma sin cuerpo de fantasma,
con sus pasos livianos como harina nocturna
y su voz que sólo las cosas patrocinan?
Los muebles viajan llenos de su ser silencioso
como pequeños barcos dentro del viejo barco,
cargados de su ser desvanecido y vago:
los roperos, las verdes carpetas de las mesas,
el color de las cortinas y del suelo,
todo ha sufrido el lento vacío de sus manos,
y su respiración ha gastado las cosas.
Se desliza y resbala, desciende, transparente,
aire en el aire frío que corre sobre el buque,
con sus manos ocultas se apoya en las barandas
y mi
ra el mar amargo que huye detrás del buque.
Solamente las aguas rechazan su influencia,
su color y su olor de olvidado fantasma,
y frescas y profundas desarrollan su baile
como vidas de fuego, como sangre o perfume,
nuevas y fuertes surgen, unidas y reunidas.
Sin gastarse las aguas, sin costumbre ni tiempo,
verdes de cantidad, eficaces y frías,
tocan el negro estómago del buque y su materia
lavan, sus costras rotas, sus arrugas de hierro:
roen las aguas vivas la cáscara del buque,
traficando sus largas banderas de espuma
y sus dientes de sal volando en gotas.
Mira el mar el fantasma con su rostro sin ojos:
el círculo del día, la tos del buque, un pájaro
en la ecuación redonda y sola del espacio,
y desciende de nuevo a la vida del buque
cayendo sobre el tiempo muerto y la madera,
resbalando en las negras cocinas y cabinas,
lento de aire y atmósfera y desolado espacio.
THE GHOST OF THE CARGO BOAT
Distance sheltered upon tubes of foam,
salt in ritual waves and defined orders,
and the smell and murmur of an old ship,
of rotten planks and broken tools,
and weary machines that howl and weep,
pushing the prow, kicking the sides,
chewing laments, swallowing, swallowing distances,
making a noise of bitter waters upon the bitter waters,
moving the ancient ship upon the ancient waters.
Inner vaults, twilight tunnels
visited by the intermittent day of the ports:
sacks, sacks accumulated by a somber god,
like gray animals, round and eyeless,
with sweet gray ears,
and estimable bellies filled with wheat or copra,
sensitive paunches of pregnant women
shabbily dressed in gray, patiently
waiting in the shadow of a dreary movie house.
The outer waters suddenly
are heard passing, running like an opaque horse,
with a noise of horsehoofs on the water,
swift, plunging again into the waters.
There is then nothing more than time in the cabins:
time in the ill-fated solitary dining room,
motionless and visible like a great misfortune.
The smell of leather and cloth worn to shreds,
and onions, and olive oil, and even more,
the smell of someone floating in the corners of the ship,
the smell of someone nameless
who comes down the ladders like a wave of air,
and crosses through corridors with his absent body,
and observes with his eyes preserved by death.
He observes with his colorless, sightless eyes,
slowly, and he passes trembling, without presence or shadow:
noises wrinkle him, things pierce him,
his transparency makes the dirty chairs gleam.
Who is that ghost without a ghostly body,
with his steps light as nocturnal flour
and his voice sponsored only by things?
The furniture moves along filled with his silent being
like little ships inside the old ship,
laden with his faint and uncertain being:
the closets, the green covers of the tables,
the color of the curtains and the floor,
everything has suffered the slow emptiness of his hands,
and his breathing has wasted things away.
He slides and slips, he descends transparent,
air in the cold air that runs across the ship,
with his hidden hands he leans against the railings
and looks at the angry sea that flees behind the ship.
Only the waters reject his influence,
his color and his smell of forgotten ghost,
and fresh and deep they develop their dance
like fiery lives, like blood or perfume,
new and strong they surge, joined and rejoined.
The waters, inexhaustible, without custom or time,
green in quantity, efficient and cold,
touch the black stomach of the ship and wash
its matter, its broken crusts, its iron wrinkles:
the living waters gnaw at the ship’s shell,
trafficking its long banners of foam
and its salt teeth flying in drops.
The ghost looks at the sea with his eyeless face:
the circle of the day, the cough of the ship, a bird
in the round and solitary equation of space,
and he descends again to the life of the ship,
falling upon dead time and wood,
slipping in the black kitchens and cabins,
slow with air and atmosphere and desolate space.
TANGO DEL VIUDO
Oh maligna, ya habrás hallado la carta, ya habrás
llorado de furia,
y habrás insultado el recuerdo de mi madre,
llamándola perra podrida y madre de perros,
ya habrás bebido sola, solitaria, el té del artardecer
mirando mis viejos zapatos vacíos para siempre,
y ya no podrás recordar mis enfermedades, mis sueños
nocturnos, mis comidas,
sin maldecirme en voz alta como si estuviera allí aún
quejándome del trópico, de los coolies corringhis,
de las venenosas fiebres que me hicieron tanto daño
y de los espantosos ingleses que odio todavía.
Maligna, la verdad, qué noche tan grande, qué tierra tan sola!
He llegado otra vez a los dormitorios solitarios,
a almorzar en los restaurantes comida fría, y otra vez
tiro al suelo los pantalones y las camisas,
no hay perchas en mi habitación, ni retratos de nadie
en las paredes.
Cuánta sombra de la que hay en mi alma daría por
recobrarte,
y qué amenazadores me parecen los nombres de los meses,
y la palabra invierno qué sonido de tambor lúgubre tiene.
Enterrado junto al cocotero hallarás más tarde
el cuchillo que escondí allí por temor de que me mataras,
y ahora repentinamente quisiera oler su acero de cocina
acostumbrado al peso de tu mano y al brillo de tu pie:
bajo la humedad de la tierra, entre las sordas raíces,
de los lenguajes humanos el pobre sólo sabría
tu nombre,
y la espesa tierra no comprende tu nombre
hecho de impenetrables substancias divinas.
Así como me aflige pensar en el claro día de tus piernas
recostadas como detenidas y duras aguas solares,
y la golondrina que durmiendo y volando vive en tus ojos,
y el perro de furia que asilas en el corazón,
así también veo las muertes que están entre nosotros desde ahora,
y respiro en el aire la ceniza y lo destruido,
el largo, solitario espacio que me rodea para siempre.
Daría este viento de mar gigante por tu brusca respiración
oída en largas noches sin mezcla de olvido,
uniéndose a la atmósfera como el látigo a la piel del caballo.
Y por oírte orinar, en la oscuridad, en el fondo de
la casa,
como vertiendo una miel delgada, trémula, argentina, obstinada,
cuántas veces entregaría este coro de sombras que
poseo,
y el ruido de espadas inútiles que se oye en mi alma,
y la paloma de sangre que está solitaria en mi frente
llamando cosas desaparecidas, seres desaparecidos,
substancias extrañamente
inseparables y perdidas.
THE WIDOWER’S TANGO*
Oh evil one, you must by now have found the letter, you must
have wept with fury,
and you must have insulted my mother’s memory,
calling her rotten bitch and mother of dogs,
you must have drunk alone, all by yourself, your twilight tea,
looking at my old shoes forever empty,
and you won’t be able any longer to recall my illnesses, my
night dreams, my meals,
without cursing me aloud as if I were still there,
complaining about the tropics, about the corringhis coolies,
about the poisonous fevers that did me so much harm,
and about the frightful Englishmen that I still hate.
Evil one, really, what an enormous night, what a lonely earth!
I have come again to the solitary bedrooms,
to lunch on cold food in the restaurants, and again
I throw my trousers and shirts upon the floor,
there are no coat hangers in my room, no pictures of anyone
on the walls.
How much of the darkness in my soul I would give to get
you back,
and how threatening to me seem the names of the months,
and the word “winter,” what a mournful drum sound it has.
Buried next to the cocoanut tree you will later find
the knife that I hid there for fear that you would kill me,
and now suddenly I should like to smell its kitchen steel
accustomed to the weight of your hand and the shine of your foot:
under the moisture of the earth, among the deaf roots,
of all human languages the poor thing would know only
your name,
and the thick earth does not understand your name made
of impenetrable and divine substances.
Just as it afflicts me to think of the clear day of your legs
curled up like still and harsh solar waters,
and the swallow that sleeping and flying lives in your eyes,
and the furious dog that you shelter in your heart,
so too I see the deaths that are between us from now on,
and I breathe in the air ashes and destruction,
the long, solitary space that surrounds me forever.