by Unknown
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