[941] Clenched Soul
Guest poem submitted by a contributor who wishes to remain anonymous:
We have lost even this twilight.
No one saw us this evening hand in hand
while the blue night dropped on the world.
I have seen from my window
the fiesta of sunset in the distant mountain tops.
Sometimes a piece of sun
burned like a coin in my hand.
I remembered you with my soul clenched
in that sadness of mine that you know.
Where were you then?
Who else was there?
Saying what?
Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly
when I am sad and feel you are far away?
The book fell that always closed at twilight
and my blue sweater rolled like a hurt dog at my feet.
Always, always you recede through the evenings
toward the twilight erasing statues.
-- Pablo Neruda
|
Pablo Neruda is one of my favourite poets. His poetry has a curious ethereal
quality to it, a haunting sadnesss. This is one of his most brilliant poems,
conveying the wistfulness ever so tenderly. In a way I would call him the
Van Gogh of poetry -- a brilliant artist drawing on the most poignant of
pictures and capturing them in a web of words. His poetry lives, lives in
the true sense of the word.
[Minstrels Links]
Pablo Neruda:
Poem #164, Bird
Poem #422, Sonnet XVII: Love
Poem #605, The Saddest Poem
Poem #816, I'm Explaining a Few Things
From: Melissa Towner <mstowner@>
Dear Folks --
When you publish a poem in translation could you please try to publish the
translator's name as well? So much of the poem as we experience it is the
translator's work. I have found that I really admire W.S. Merwin's
translations of Neruda but have not been able to get ahold of much of it.
I wonder if this is one of his translations?
Thanks,
Melissa Towner
From: Maureen Faulkner <mfaulkner15@>
i luv this poem. it captures all of love.
--Boundary_(ID_72gbWjjBU0eHXdwHGIA1hA)
Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" http-equiv=Content-Type>
<META content="MSHTML 5.00.2722.2800" name=GENERATOR>
<STYLE></STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY bgColor=#ffffff>
<DIV><FONT size=2>i luv this poem. it captures all of
love.</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>
--Boundary_(ID_72gbWjjBU0eHXdwHGIA1hA)--
From: "Breyman, Terri L" <Terri.Breyman@>
Hello,
My name is Terri Breyman. I am the resource teacher for the online campus
for Fairfax County Public Schools. We are creating online courses for our
students. The courses are password protected and only registered students
have access to our online courses. We would like permission to link to your
site for our English 10 course.
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/941.html
thank you,
terri breyman
e-Learning Resource Teacher
Instructional Technology Services
Instructional Services Department
Chapel Square Center
4414 Holborn Ave.
Annandale, Virginia 22003
Phone 703-503-7774