Some Neruda for a Friday morning

The Poet's Obligation by Pablo Neruda from On the Blue Shore of Silence (Rayo)

To whoever is not listening to the sea
this Friday morning, to whoever is cooped up
in house or office, factory or woman
or street or mine or harsh prison cell:
to him I come, and, without speaking or looking,
I arrive and open the door of his prison,
and a vibration starts up, vague and insistent,
a great fragment of thunder sets in motion
the rumble of the planet and the foam,
the raucous rivers of the ocean flood,
the star vibrates swiftly in its corona,
and the sea is beating, dying and continuing.

So, drawn on by my destiny,
I ceaselessly must listen to and keep
the sea's lamenting in my awareness,
I must feel the crash of the hard water
and gather it up in a perpetual cup
so that, wherever those in prison may be,
wherever they suffer the autumn's castigation,
I may be there with an errant wave,
I may move, passing through windows,
and hearing me, eyes will glance upward
saying, "How can I reach the sea?"
And I shall broadcast, saying nothing,
the starry echoes of the wave,
a breaking up of foam and of quicksand,
a rustling of salt withdrawing,
the grey cry of sea-birds on the coast.

So, through me, freedom and the sea
will make their answer to the shuttered heart.


I've been delving back into my volumes of Neruda lately.  There's something about reading the poems in their original language that is missing in translation, no matter how accurate and lovely those translations may be.  Although my Spanish is more than a little rusty, I find I can still get the gist of the poems.  Plus I have the version of Cien Sonetos de Amor that has the English translation on the page facing the original Spanish text.  Cheating you say?  Tal vez . . .

Anyway, I don't think it's a more accurate meaning I'm seeking when I read in Spanish.  Rather, it's the lilt of the poem-- the ebb and flow of vowels and consonants as they roll from line to line, break from stanza to stanza.  I think about the way the sound of certain words seem to embody the object and action themselves: foam, crash, castigation, sea, shuttered heart.  I often find myself fingering a phrase on my tongue like prayer beads. 

gather it up in a perpetual cup . . . gather it up in a perpetual cup . . . gather it up in a perpetual cup

Listening to the heartbeat of a poem helps me be more conscious of the rhythm of my own life.

What helps you become aware of the rhythm of your life?