Pablo Neruda, on Food and Water

Ode to Water 

by Pablo Neruda

Everything on earth bristled, the bramble

pricked and the green thread 

bit, the petal fell

until the only flower was falling.

Water is different,

has no direction but beauty,

runs through all dreams of color,

takes bright lessons 

from the rock

and in those occupations works out 

the unbroken duties of the foam.

That we should all have the artist's lens of the late Chilean poet, who found beauty in the simplest things. In his Memoirs, he said he left his native Chile "to go singing through the world." Certainly his odes to various foods (excerpted below) have the power to pique anyone's interest, whether you have an appetite for poetry or not. 

Ode to the Lemon

...In the lemon

knives cut

a small cathedral,

the hidden aspe

opened acid windows

to the light

and drops poured out

the topazes,

the altars,

the cool architecture...

so when your hand 

grasps the hemisphere

of the cut 

lemon above your plate

you spill a universe of gold,

a goblet yellow

with miracles...

Ode to the Tomato

...The tomato

luminary of the earth,

repeated 

and fertile

star,

shows us 

its convolutions,

its canals,

the illustrious plentitude

and the abundance

without pit,

without husk,

without scales or thorns,

the gift of its fiery color

and the totality of its coolness.

Ode to the Artichoke

...and the gentle artichoke 

stood there in the garden

dressed as a warrior

...

Do read the full length versions of these poems and also Neruda's other odes: to watermelon, salt, onion, and the like.

Unfortunately, I think the pieces are too long to include in a single post. Read and/or listen to them in Neruda's native Spanish. Here's a challenge: find a decent Spanish-language version of these poems on You Tube. I, for one, didn't like what my search produced.

(I did, however, come across a video of my beloved Ralph Fiennes reading Neruda's Ode to the Sea. You may have heard this poem in the 1994 Italian film Il Postino, which features a fictitious Pablo Neruda. I'm still deciding what's more beautiful: Neruda's Ode to the Sea, the Italian language, or the gods and goddesses who act in the film.)

***

The text from which I've quoted includes both the Spanish and English versions of the poems.

It is Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon. Selected Poems of Pablo Neruda. Translated by Stephen Mitchell.