Poet's Nook : Pablo Neruda's "Leaning into the Afternoons"

Pablo Neruda died on Sept. 23, 1973 at the age of 69 just days after a CIA-backed coup that toppled democratically-elected President Salvadore Allende. Doubts still surround the cause of his death--officially reported as prostrate cancer--as Neruda was quite forceful in his criticisms of the murderous, US-backed Pinochet regime. Having won the Nobel Prize for Literature two years before his death, his international fame shed an embarrassing light on the new dictatorship which has led many to believe that he was killed to silence his criticism. Today the Chilean government initiated an investigation on whether Augusto Pinochet's regime murdered Neruda after it seized power. It would not be surprising if it is discovered that he was deliberately snuffed out like many other critics of the military regime, and this would be an overdue dose of poetic justice which we all should applaud.


For those who cannot make out the words of the poem in this beautiful video tribute to Neruda, here it is:

Leaning into the afternoons I cast my sad nets
towards your oceanic eyes.

There in the highest blaze my solitude lengthens and flames,
its arms turning like a drowning man's.

I send out red signals across your absent eyes
that smell like the sea or the beach by a lighthouse.

You keep only darkness, my distant female,
from your regard sometimes the coast of dread emerges.

Leaning into the afternoons I fling my sad nets
to that sea that is thrashed by your oceanic eyes.

The birds of night peck at the first stars
that flash like my soul when I love you.

The night gallops on its shadowy mare
shedding blue tassels over the land.

More Neruda here.....

OneLove

:::MME:::