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Morton Marcus: This is KUSP community sponsored radio for Santa Cruz, Monterey, and Salinas. Stay tuned for the Poetry Show. You are tuned to 88.9 FM. Gaspar Rivera: Pero canta en las estaciones suburbanas tu voz, en

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He said: los desembarcaderos vespertinos chapotea como un agua oscura tu palabra, tu pueblo blanco y negro, pueblo de pobres, pueblo simple como todos los pueblos, no olvida tu campana: se

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congrega cantando bajo la magnitud de tu espaciosa vida: entre los pueblos con tu amor camina acariciando el desarrollo puro de la fraternidad sobre la tierra. Morton Marcus: Your voice sings in suburban stations, in the

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vespertine wharfs, your word splashes like a dark water. Your people, white and black, your needy people, simple people, like all people do not forget your bell. They gather singing under the magnitude of your spacious life, Walt Whitman.

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Among the peoples with your love, they walk caressing the pure development of brotherhood on earth. His name was Pablo Neruda, the poem one of the "Elementary Odes," this one to the great American poet, a person he

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certainly felt was his brother, Walt Whitman. This is part two of the birthday show of Pablo Neruda, born on July 12th, 1904 and this is part two, as I said. Last week, we saw the anguished Neruda, the Neruda sent as a consul to Southeast Asia,

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working in Ceylon, working in many different places, Rangoon, in Asia, and then coming back to the Spanish Civil War, where he joined with many of the great poets of Spain of that time, especially Lorca, put out a magazine and then was horrified

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at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. It was after the Spanish Civil War that the great change takes place. Two things happen: Neruda wants to come back to the world of Chile, where he is from, and he wants to find his roots, he wants to

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find the history of South America; and two, he now wants to be a voice for his fellow man, the worker, and he joins the Communist Party, comes back to Chile after being reassigned to Paris. And in first Paris and then in Chile, he writes his

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great book, which is called- well, one of his great books. I should say that Pablo Neruda, you say, well, he has an awful lot of books already, Pablo Neruda is the author of forty-five books of poems when he will finally have finished

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writing his poetry. And the next book, which he writes, which is called first, "The Canto General," the general song of Chile, becomes, "The Canto General," the general song and it becomes virtually an entire history of South America, a vast

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epic in which he traces the beginnings, the actual creation of the animals and the land, then the life of the Indians, then the coming of the Conquistadores, then the corruption of South America by the Europeans and by the North

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Americans in this five hundred page book, as I said, called, "The Canto General." We will read now from, "The Canto General," I'll give you a feeling of that. And the poem that I'm thinking of with my guest and compadre, who is

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Gaspar Rivera, a poet from Santa Cruz. Actually, where are you from originally, Gaspar? Gaspar Rivera: [Inaudible] Morton Marcus: Why are you not working here? You've got to talk

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into this one. Gaspar Rivera: I think he's okay. Yeah, originally, I'm from the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, this remote village in the mountains in the southern state in Mexico.

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Morton Marcus: Okay, and I want to welcome you again to this mad fiasco. We're reading from around thirty different books and trying to get things together here, so that it will have some kind of a sense. In fact, right now I am just

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stalling for time, as I try to find a poem for Gaspar to read, and it is one of the early poems in, "Canto General," and this is when we talk about the early animal life and the creation of it on the South American continent, and it is called:

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ALGUNAS BESTIAS, or SOME BEASTS Gaspar Rivera: ALGUNAS BESTIAS Era el crepúsculo de la iguana. Desde la arcoirisada crestería su lengua como un dardo se hundía en la verdura, el

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hormiguero monacal pisaba con melodioso pie la selva, el guanaco fino como el oxígeno en las anchas alturas pardas iba calzando botas de oro, mientras la llama abría cándidos ojos en la delicadeza del mundo lleno de rocío. Los monos trenzaban

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un hilo interminablemente erótico en las riberas de la aurora, derribando muros de polen y espantando el vuelo violeta de las mariposas de Muzo. Era la noche de los caimanes, la noche pura y pululante de hocicos saliendo

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del légamo, y de las ciénagas soñolientas un ruido opaco de armaduras volvía al origen terrestre. El jaguar tocaba las hojas con su ausencia fosforescente, el puma corre en el ramaje como el fuego devorador mientras arden en él

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los ojos alcohólicos de la selva. Los tejones rascan los pies del río, husmean el nido cuya delicia palpitante atacarán con dientes rojos. como el círculo de la tierra, está la gigante anaconda

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cubierta de barros rituales, devoradora y religiosa. Morton Marcus: SOME BEASTS It was the twilight of the iguana. From below his rainbow-ridge brow, his tongue sank like a lance into the green

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mulch, the monastic ant heap tread through the forest with melodious step. The guanaco, finest oxygen on the high wide brown plains, were golden boots, while the llama, open, candid eyes and the delicacy of a world filled with dew. The monkeys

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braided in interminable erotic thread along the banks of the dawn, demolishing walls of pollen, and startling the violet-flight of the butterflies from Muzo. It was the night of the alligators, the pure and pullulating of snouts rising

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from the ooze, and from the sleep-drenched bogs, a dull sound of armor returned to its earthly origin. The jaguar was touching the leaves with his phosphorescent absence, the puma runs in the foliage like a devouring fire, while the

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jungle's alcoholic eyes burn in him. The badgers scratch the feet of the river, sniffing out the nest whose throbbing delight, they'll attack with red teeth. And in the depths of great water, like the circle of the earth, is the giant

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anaconda, covered in a ritual mud, devouring and religious. That is one of the early poems in the book, which we will just try to give you a brief sense of. One of the other things that goes on in the book is that, Neruda now very much

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politicized, begins to take aim not only at his critics, but certainly at the corruptions that he feels the capitalistic world is belaboring South America with. One of the most popular poems from the book, and another kind of poem, a

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political poem, is called, "The United Fruit Company." And here is again Gaspar to read it. Gaspar Rivera: Okay, okay. LA UNITED FRUIT COMPANY

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Cuando sonó la trompeta, estuvo todo preparado en la tierra, y Jehova 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

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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:

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enajenó los albedríos regaló coronas de César, desenvainó la envidia, atrajo la dictadora de las moscas, moscas Trujillos, moscas Tachos, moscas Carías, moscas Martínez, moscas Ubico, moscas húmedas de sangre humilde y mermelada, moscas

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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

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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

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muerta derramada en el pudridero. Morton Marcus: UNITED FRUIT COMPANY When the trumpet sounded, it was all prepared on the earth, and Jehovah parceled out the earth to Coca Cola, Incorporated,

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Anaconda Copper, Ford Motors and other entities: The Fruit Company, Incorporated reserved for itself the most succulent the central coast of my own lan, the sweet waist of America. It rechristened its territories, the, "Banana Republics," and

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over the sleeping dead, over the restless heroes who conquered greatness, liberty and flags, it established the comic opera: alienated free will, gave out Caesar's crowns, unsheathed envy, attracted the dictatorship of flies, Trujillo flies, Tacho

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flies, Carias flies, Martinez flies, Ubico flies, damp flies of humble blood and marmalade, drunken flies who zoom over the graves of the people, circus flies, wise flies well-trained in tyranny. Among the bloodthirsty flies, the Fruit

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Company lands its ships, filling them to their gunnels with coffee and fruit; ships which steal away with a treasure of our drowned lands like laden trays. Meanwhile, Indians are falling into the sugared chasms of the harbors, wrapped for

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burial in the dawn mist: a body rolls, a thing that has no name, a fallen number, or cluster of dead fruit dumped into a lime pit. The poems are powerful, humorous, they are portraits,

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they're histories, they're attempts to evoke the entire history of a continent from prehistoric time to the historical present. Midway through the book is maybe the greatest poem that Neruda ever wrote. It has been translated

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several times into English, the best translation never made it into a book, by H.R. Hayes. And maybe the next best one, maybe it is the best one, by John Felstiner is in a book called, "Translating Neruda: The Way to Machu Picchu," is a fascinating

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book on how he came to translate the poem, what he used to translate the poem, and then gives you the translation in the end, which I think is very good. And it is a 1980 Stanford University Press book, again, John Felstiner,

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F-E-L-S-T-I-N-E-R, translating Neruda. The poem is called, "The Heights of Machu Picchu," and it is a stunning poem, I mean, it is a poem in the grand element. And if Neruda had written nothing else, he would be counted one of the great poets

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of any language just through this work, which is in a number of sections, in fact, as I remember twelve in all, but I may be wrong and maybe eleven, twelve in all, yes. And the attempt here is to go to Machu Picchu, the great stone city,

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which was found in 1911 by Hiram Bingham, nine thousand feet above the Urubamba River in Peru, and which was abandoned, there was no one living there, but it is a perfectly intact city that the Spaniards or no one else ever saw when they went

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down the river and looked up. And we think now that it was actually a town for women, maybe even virgins of some religious rite, we're not sure. But, to Neruda, when he goes there, it is an attempt, it is the ability to touch the past, to get to his

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roots. And what he finds there, and I'll only read you one or two sections of this, what he finds there is an attempt to not reach the grandeur of the Incas, of the leaders of the Indian Indians, of the great royalty and their monuments, but to

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touch the common people who built the stones into buildings, walls, and cities, those are his brothers, they are again the workers of another time being abused as they are in modern times. It is really a stunning poem. Let me read you the first

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half- Gaspar read you just the first stanza of Part Two, he has not come to Machu Picchu yet, but this is how he talks about being a human being and he is obviously feeling much despair. And if you just read the first stanza. Okay, thank you.

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Gaspar Rivera: ALTURAS DE MACCHU PICCHU Si la flor a la flor entrega el alto germen y la roca mantiene su flor diseminada en su golpeado traje de diamante y arena, el hombre arruga el pétalo de la luz que recoge en

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los determinados manantiales marinos y taladra el metal palpitante en sus manos. Y pronto, entre la ropa y el humo, sobre la mesa hundida, como una barajada cantidad, queda el alma: cuarzo y desvelo, lágrimas en el océano como estanques de

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frío: pero aún mátala y agonízala con papel y con odio, sumérgela en la alfombra cotidiana, desgárrala entre las vestiduras hostiles del alambre. Morton Marcus: And now something was happening in this book also

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to Neruda's style. Instead of the surrealist-tinged style of the 30s, which we saw in, "Residencias," the very elaborate phraseology, the cataloguing, very much like Walt Whitman, things had started to become more compact, and though

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the lines are still fairly long, you can see a conciseness that was not in Neruda before. He now, instead of sighing and declaiming against the empty, lower middle class and middle class life and the life he saw in the tropics, he now has a

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purpose, and that purpose is to not only celebrate the world, which he did not do before, but certainly to make the world come alive for his brothers, the workers. Here he is describing how we discover our soul, and the language is so beautiful in

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part two that I just want to bring your attention to it. Okay, I'm just looking at something else here. Okay: PART TWO OF THE HEIGHTS OF MACCHU PICCHU, what Gaspar just read.

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While flower to flower gives up the high seed and rock keeps its flower sown in a beaten coat of diamonds and sand, man crumples the petal of light he picks in the deep-set springs of the sea and drills the pulsing metal in his hands. And soon, among

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clothes and smoke, on the broken table, like a shuffled pack of cards, there sits the soul: quartz and sleeplessness, tears in the ocean like pools of cold, yet still man kills and tortures it with paper and with hate, stuffs it each day under rugs,

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rends it on the hostile trappings of the wire. And again that this beautiful description of the soul, and then what man does to it after he has it, that was John Felstiner's translation, the other translations I've been

00:21:21.490 - 00:21:35.920

reading are mine. And now I'm going to go to that point when he ascends to Machu Picchu, there are two ways of getting the Machu Picchu: by the old Inca highway, which many people did not know until a few years ago, which goes from Cusco, the

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train line outside Cusco, then you go up into the mountains, you go fourteen thousand feet high, and you go through jungles, you go through high, bare mountains, and you descend into Machu Picchu, which is around 8500 feet. That is the

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way the Incas would see it. The way that people do it and the way that Neruda did it was by taking the little train and chugging his way up to the 8500 feet and coming on Machu Picchu that way. At any rate, here is his first description of Machu

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Picchu. And it goes like this, after all the disillusion with the modern world: Then I climb the ladder of the earth through the vast jungle of lost forests until I reached you, Macchu Picchu. High city of

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stone steps, home at long last of what the earth could not hide in her sleeping garments. In you, as in two parallel lines, the cradle of lightning and man is rocked in a wind of thorns. Mother of stone, sperm of condors. High reef of the human

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dawn. Shovel lost in the primal sand. This was the home, this is the site: here the wide greens of maize grew tall and fell again like red hail. Here the golden thread of the lacuna was carted to clothe lovers, tombs, mothers, the king, prayers,

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warriors. Here the feet of men rested at night near the feet of eagles and the lofty layers of carnivores, and in the dawn, they trod with feet of thunder through the thinning mists and touch the land and the stones until they could recognize them

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in the night or in death. I look at clothing and hands, the remains of water and sonorous hollows, the wall smooth by the touch of a face which looked at earthly lamps with my eyes, which oil the vanish timbers with my hands because

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everything, clothing, skin, pots, words, wine, bread were gone, fallen to earth. The air entered with fingers of orange blossoms, touching all the sleepers: a thousand years of air, months, weeks of air, of blue wind, of iron cordillera,

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the highest receptacle that ever held our silence a life of stone after so many lives. And now, not reading the Spanish, let me read you another poem, a section that I've translated which really shows

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this connection between him and the past and Macchu Picchu but also with the workmen of Macchu Picchu, the people, the simple people, the workers who had to build it, and had to suffer for it. And this is the tenth section of the heights of Macchu

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Picchu. And I think it really rends into English beautifully because of its rhythmical and syntactical structure and it comes over very, very easily. And here it is, remember, this is the great city of all stones that still stands perfectly

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today, though it may not have been inhabited since the 14th or 15th century: Stone upon stone, and man, where was he? Air upon air, and man, where was he? Time upon time, and man, where was he? Were you

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too the broken fragment of man's incompleteness, of the empty eagle the true through today's streets, that through the footprints, that through the leaves of dead autumn is pounding his soul to the tomb? Poor hand, poor foot, poor life.

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Days of light unraveled on you, like the rain on the bandurrias(?) of a fiesta, dropping that dark nourishment, petal by petal, into your empty mouth. Hunger, coral of man, hunger, secret plant, wood cutter's root, hunger, did your

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reef-edge rise up to these high fallen towers? I ask you, salt of the highways, to show me the spoon; allow me, architecture, to scrape the stamens of stone with a stick, to climb all the steps of air to emptiness, to scratch at the entrails until I

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touch man. Macchu Picchu, did you play stone upon stone, and at the base, rags? Coal upon coal, and at the bottom, tears? Fire upon gold, and in that gold, trembling red raindrops of blood? Return to me the slave you buried here. Wrench from the

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land the hard bread of the poor, show me the clothing of a servant and his window frame. Tell me whether his sleeping was raucous, half open like a black hole in the wall made by exhaustion. The wall, the wall! Whether each floor of stone

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weighed on his sleep, and whether he fell beneath as if beneath the moon, overcome by sleep. Ancient America, sunken bride, did your fingers too, on leaving the forests for the high emptiness of the gods, under the nuptial banners of light and

00:27:17.340 - 00:27:33.630

honor, mixing the thunder of drums and lances, did you too, did you our fingers too, those which transcribed the abstract rose and the cold line, and the blood-stained breast of new grain into cloth of radiant material, into hard cavities,

00:27:33.750 - 00:27:58.460

did you too, you too, buried America, store in the lowliest, in the bitter intestine, hunger like an eagle? If you've just tuned in, we are celebrating the second program of Pablo Neruda, the great South American poet's birthday which

00:27:58.460 - 00:28:14.960

was July the 12th, and he would- well, he was born in 1904, you can figure out how old he would be. We are finishing now with a book that I think is going to be brought into English and is called, "The Canto General," an amazing five hundred page

00:28:14.960 - 00:28:32.600

history of South America, an attempt to evoke the history of South America, both politically, individually, and geologically, and botanically in every other way. And then to also show some of the political ramifications of being a South American when

00:28:32.810 - 00:28:52.970

you've got the powerful United States to the north, which economically wants to put certain pressures on you. Well, the book was amazingly received, came out in 1950. By this time, Neruda had returned to Chile, and in 1948, ran for the

00:28:53.510 - 00:29:07.130

Parliament of Chile, as I said, as a communist senator, won the place after he had actually had to flee for his life several years before, because he said that the president had sold out to the United States, and the United States had come in with

00:29:07.130 - 00:29:21.350

economic interests and had totally bought him off. The president then went after him for several years while he hid out, finally got out of the country. Now, several years later, and he becomes a member of the ruling

00:29:21.350 - 00:29:42.170

body of Chile, and after this exhausting explosion of a book, he does not stop. He writes another kind of poem, which has become in many ways his most popular poems. They are very short line simple poems in which he talks about simple, everyday

00:29:42.170 - 00:30:01.100

objects that people use, usually domestically, they're poems to soap, poems to lemons, poems to chestnuts, onions, people he likes. They are wonderful poems, sometimes they have one, two, or three syllables per line and we are going to read some now, and

00:30:01.130 - 00:30:19.100

in fact, Gaspar is wondering which ones I'm going to foist on him. The one that is most read is a poem called, "Poem to My Socks," and it's not a poem, it's odes, and all these things were called odes. And do you have a copy of that there? If

00:30:19.100 - 00:30:36.470

you don't, I certainly can get it for you most easily, Gaspar. And they are poems that are for the people, people who do not understand poetry. In other words, Neruda has to now directly relate to people who speak the language but who do

00:30:36.470 - 00:30:52.640

not know everything that has gone on in the academies, and so he must take a look at everyday objects, but also what he does is he celebrates them and it is now that Neruda becomes the great celebrator, really the Walt Whitman of South America

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and that is not a put-down, that is, as far as I'm concerned [cut-off]. Gaspar Rivera: El agua, a goterones lentos, hacia su mar, hacia su seco océano, hacia su ola sin agua.

00:31:35.190 - 00:31:57.000

extenso, y un estertor saliendo de un granero, bodegas, cigarras, poblaciones, estímulos, habitaciones, niñas durmiendo con las manos en el corazón, soñando con bandidos, con incendios, veo barcos, veo árboles de médula erizados como

00:31:57.000 - 00:32:19.290

gatos rabiosos, veo sangre, puñales y medias de mujer, y pelos de hombre, veo camas, veo corredores donde grita una virgen, veo frazadas y órganos y hoteles. Veo los sueños sigilosos, admito los postreros días, y también los orígenes, y

00:32:19.350 - 00:32:38.790

también los recuerdos, como un párpado atrozmente levantado a la fuerza estoy mirando. Y entonces hay este sonido: un ruido rojo de huesos, un pegarse de carne, y piernas amarillas como espigas juntándose. Yo escucho entre el

00:32:38.790 - 00:32:57.030

disparo de los besos, escucho, sacudido entre respiraciones y sollozos. Estoy mirando, oyendo, con la mitad del alma en el mar y la mitad del alma en la tierra, y con las dos mitades del alma miro al mundo. y aunque cierre los ojos y me

00:32:57.030 - 00:33:17.940

cubra el corazón enteramente, veo caer un agua sorda, a goterones sordos. Es como un huracán de gelatina, como una catarata de espermas y medusas. Veo correr un arco iris turbio. Veo pasar sus aguas a través de los huesos.

00:33:21.230 - 00:33:36.380

Morton Marcus: SEXUAL WATER by Pablo Neruda is translated by H.R. Hayes. Running in single drops, in drops like teeth, in thick drops of marmalade and blood, running in drops the water forms, like a

00:33:36.380 - 00:33:54.050

sort of drops, like a rending river of glass, it falls biting, striking the axis of symmetry, hitting on the ribs of the soul, breaking cast off things, soaking the darkness. It is only a gust, damper than tears. A liquid, a sweat, a nameless oil,

00:33:54.140 - 00:34:11.090

a sharp movement creating itself, thickening itself, the water falls in slow drops toward the sea, toward its dry ocean, toward its wave without water. I see a long summer in a deathrattle coming out of a granary, cellars, cicadas, town,

00:34:11.090 - 00:34:26.690

stimuli, habitations, girl children sleeping with hands on their hearts dreaming with pirates with fire, I see ships, I see trees of spinal cord, bristling like furious cats. I see blood, daggers and women's stockings, I see men's hair, I

00:34:26.690 - 00:34:47.600

see beds, I see corridors where a virgin screams, I see blankets and organs and hotels. I see stealthy dreams. I accept the preceding days and also origins and also memories, like an eyelid dreadfully raised by force, I am watching. And then

00:34:47.600 - 00:35:03.680

there is this noise: the red sound of bones and the hearing of flesh and legs yellow as green stalks joining together. I am listening along explosions of kisses, I am listening, shaking among breathing and sobs, I am watching, hearing with half my

00:35:03.680 - 00:35:22.700

soul on sea and half my soul on land, and with both halves of my soul, I look at the world. And I close my eyes and cover my heart completely, I see a deaf water falling in deaf drops. It is like a hurricane of gelatin, like a cataract of sperm and

00:35:22.700 - 00:35:43.880

medusas, I see a muddy rainbow flowing. I see its waters passing through my bones. Well, this amazing ability to pierce through to the very essence of existence comes out of yes, a picture of a tiredness

00:35:43.880 - 00:36:01.820

and exhaustion and ennui, a horror of the modern world around him and the way that world is moving in the early 1930s. Of course, it's moving towards the Spanish Civil War and towards World War Two but on his way better to Europe, he

00:36:01.820 - 00:36:19.910

writes a series of poems which I can, going back to I don't have all the poems here, so I probably won't be able to find them. But they're all the poems really of resonance is number one, written in 1933 and include such famous poems as article

00:36:19.910 - 00:36:36.860

poetica, the ARS, poetica, Sonata and destructions. The wonderful one about the ship which is not in here, the dream horses, the Phantom ship. The two poems we're going to read now cover yeto solo, and tengo de voto, or the widowers Tango.

00:36:37.700 - 00:36:57.470

They're an amazing series of poems. And let us start off with this dual picture really. Which is, do we have Caballero swim, solo next. Okay, this is you're gonna have to transfer the book to me. This is really no rudess picture of himself and how he

00:36:57.470 - 00:37:13.160

feels the world invades us. patiently like a jungle, interesting imagery, because he was born in the jungle. In fact, may I suggest to you if this program interests you, not only his poems, but a wonderful autobiography that he wrote

00:37:13.160 - 00:37:25.700

called memoirs, which I'm sure you can still get in places down, like logos. It is an incredible book. It was put out in hardback, but it's been in paperback for years from penguin. I don't know whether it's still around, but it is

00:37:25.700 - 00:37:40.160

just a beautifully evocative work. And much of the information I'm giving you about his life tonight is taken from it, but it in no way can capture the gorgeous style, and the sense of everything this man touches, turns to poetry. Here

00:37:40.160 - 00:37:56.450

is this poem, The Caballero the gentleman, alone, right? That's the one we're reading next. Okay, and this is the way they follow one poem, two poems. We're going to do gentlemen alone, and then we're going to do the widowers Tango, and I'll

00:37:56.450 - 00:38:07.940

tell you about that. But here is pavlin router sort of painting this portrait on of himself. And this, the sickness of the soul that he feels in 1933 Gaspar Rivera: CABALLERO SOLO

00:38:09.260 - 00:38:23.750

Los jóvenes homosexuales y las muchachas amorosas, y las largas viudas que sufren el delirante insomnio, y las jóvenes señoras preñadas hace treinta horas, y los roncos gatos que cruzan mi jardín en tinieblas, como un collar de

00:38:23.750 - 00:38:40.250

palpitantes ostras sexuales rodean mi residencia solitaria, como enemigos establecidos contra mi alma, como conspiradores en traje de dormitorio que cambiaran largos besos espesos por consigna. El radiante verano conduce a los

00:38:40.250 - 00:38:58.940

enamorados en uniformes regimientos melancólicos, hechos de gordas y flacas y alegres y tristes parejas: bajo los elegantes cocoteros, junto al océano y la luna hay una continua vida de pantalones y polleras, un rumor de medias de

00:38:58.940 - 00:39:17.090

seda acariciadas, y senos femeninos que brillan como ojos. El pequeño empleado, después de mucho, después del tedio semanal, y las novelas leídas de noche, en cama, ha definitivamente seducido a su vecina, y la lleva a los

00:39:17.090 - 00:39:35.780

miserables cinematógrafos donde los héroes son potros o príncipes apasionados, y acaricia sus piernas llenas de dulce vello con sus ardientes y húmedas manos que huelen a cigarrillo.

00:39:35.810 - 00:39:52.820

esposos se unen como dos sábanas sepultándome, y las horas después del almuerzo en que los jóvenes estudiantes, y los jóvenes estudiantes, y los sacerdotes se masturban, y los animales fornican directamente, y las abejas huelen a sangre, y

00:39:52.820 - 00:40:09.110

las moscas zumban coléricas, y los primos juegan extrañamente con sus primas, y los médicos miran con furia al marido de la joven paciente, y las horas de la mañana en que el profesor, como por des- cuido, cumple con su deber conyugal, y

00:40:09.320 - 00:40:28.700

desayuna, y, más aún, los adúlteros, que se aman con verdadero amor sobre lechos altos y largos como embarcaciones: seguramente, eternamente me rodea este gran bosque respiratorio y enredado con grandes flores como bocas y

00:40:28.700 - 00:40:49.810

dentaduras y negras raíces en forma de uñas y zapatos. Morton Marcus: "Solo Gentleman," by Pablo Neruda translated by yours truly. If there is graphic language which does offend people listening out there, turn the radio off for the next two

00:40:49.810 - 00:41:04.540

minutes I'd say because there are one or two lines here that are graphic. This is one of my favorite poems. It really describes a kind of life, a quiet desperation, as Thoreau would call it, and the images are absolutely, I think,

00:41:05.230 - 00:41:19.330

startling. And this, connected with the next poem we're going to read, really can just show you. These poems alone would make him great. There are around twenty or thirty poems from, "The Residencias," this one book alone, that are alone considered

00:41:19.330 - 00:41:27.460

great poems in the Spanish language. I mean, he has written so many great poems that we really don't know how to edit them, I think. THE SINGLE GENTLEMAN

00:41:29.460 - 00:41:45.960

The homosexual young men and the amorous girls, and the long widows who suffer from delirious insomnia, and the young wives thirty hours pregnant, and the raucous cats that cross my garden in the dark, they surround my solitary house like

00:41:45.960 - 00:42:03.660

a necklace of throbbing sexual oysters, like enemies established against my soul, like conspirators in pajamas who exchange long thick kisses on signal. The radiant summer leads the lovers in uniform melancholy regiments, made of fat and

00:42:03.660 - 00:42:19.980

skinny and happy and sad couples. Beneath the elegant coconut trees, near the ocean and the moon, there was a continuous life of trousers and skirts, a murmur of caressed silk stockings and feminine breasts that shine like eyes.

00:42:22.050 - 00:42:36.450

The petit employee after a long time, after the weekly tedium in the novels read in bed at night, has definitively seduced his neighbor and takes her to miserable movies where the heroes are cults or passionate princes, and he strokes her legs

00:42:36.450 - 00:42:53.340

covered with soft down with his hot, moist hands that smell of cigarettes. The twilights of the seducer in the nights of the married couples unite like two bedsheets burying me. And the hours after lunch when the young male students and the young

00:42:53.340 - 00:43:08.490

women students, and the priests, masturbate, and the animals openly fuck, and the bees smell of blood, and the flies buzz angrily, and the boy cousins play strangely with the girl cousins, and the doctors look furiously at the husband of the

00:43:08.490 - 00:43:26.820

young patients, and the morning hours when the professor absent mindedly fulfills his conjugal duty and has breakfast. And still more, the adulterers, who love each other with true love on beds as high and long as ocean liners. Surely, eternally,

00:43:26.850 - 00:43:46.950

I am surrounded by this great breathing, an entangled forest with huge flowers like mouths and teeth and black roots shaped like fingernails and shoes. Well, one thing was that Neruda was coming from a disastrous

00:43:47.400 - 00:44:07.650

love affair with a psychotic young woman in Ceylon. He calls her Maligna, the malignant one. And this is the subject for one of the most extraordinary love poems, a love poem of fear and longing, and yet, of goodbye and an amazing tone, which is

00:44:07.650 - 00:44:22.220

called, "The Widower's Tango," as he remembers her and here, reading it in Spanish once again, is my dear friend. Gaspar Rivera: TANGO DEL VIUDO Oh Maligna, ya habrás hallado la carta, ya habrás llorado de

00:44:22.220 - 00:44:40.160

furia, y habrás insultado el recuerdo de mi madre llamándola perra podrida y madre de perros, ya habrás bebido sola, solitaria, el té del atardecer mirando mis viejos zapatos vacíos para siempre, y ya no podrás recordar mis

00:44:40.160 - 00:44:58.010

enfermedades, mis sueños nocturnos, mis comidas, sin maldecirme en voz alta como si estuviera allí aún quejándome del trópico, de los coolíes corringhis, de las venenosas fiebres que me hicieron tanto daño y de los espantosos

00:44:58.010 - 00:45:18.260

ingleses que odio todavía. Maligna, la verdad, qué noche tan grande, qué tierra tan sola! He llegado otra vez a los dormitorios solitarios, a almorzar en los restaurantes comida fría, y otra vez tiro al suelo los pantalones y las

00:45:18.260 - 00:45:36.650

camisas, no hay perchas en mi habitación, ni retratos de nadie en las paredes. Cuánta sombra de la que hay en mi alma daría por recobrarte, y qué amenazadores me parecen los nombres de los meses, y la palabra invierno qué sonido de

00:45:36.650 - 00:45:53.300

tambor lúgubre tiene. Enterrado junto al cocotero hallarás más tarde el cuchillo que escondí allí por temor de que me mataras, y ahora repentinamente quisiera oler su acero de cocina acostumbrado al peso de tu mano y al brillo de

00:45:53.300 - 00:46:13.940

tu pie: bajo la humedad de la tierra, entre las sordas raíces, de los lenguajes humanos el pobre sólo sabría tu nombre, y la espesa tierra no comprende tu nombre hecho de impenetrables substancias divinas.

00:46:13.940 - 00:46:32.180

de tus piernas recostadas como detenidas y duras aguas solares, y la golondrina que durmiendo y volando vive en tus ojos, y el perro de furia que asilas en el corazón, así también veo las muertes que están entre nosotros desde ahora, y respiro en el

00:46:32.180 - 00:46:50.900

aire la ceniza y lo destruido, el largo, solitario espacio que me rodea para siempre. tu brusca respiración oída en largas noches sin mezcla de olvido, uniéndose a la atmósfera como el látigo a la

00:46:50.900 - 00:47:10.790

piel del caballo. y por oírte orinar, en la oscuridad, en el fondo de la casa, como vertiendo una miel delgada, trémula, argentina, obstinada, cuántas veces entregaría este coro de sombras que poseo, y el ruido de espadas inútiles que se

00:47:10.790 - 00:47:23.630

oye en mi alma, y la paloma de sangre que está solitaria en mi frente llamando cosas desaparecidas, seres desaparecidos, substancias extrañamente inseparables y perdidas.

00:47:27.920 - 00:47:47.330

Morton Marcus: Yes, so I'm going to read now, "The Widower's Tango." Again, he is talking to this woman who he calls in the poem, Maligna, or malignant one, and what I love about this poem is that she is really dangerous and is trying to kill him and he

00:47:47.330 - 00:48:03.350

has had to get away from her. And yet now looking back over the love affair, even as dangerous as she is, there was an excitement, a primal urge that was set off by her that he does not deny. Recognizing his actual physical danger from her,

00:48:04.220 - 00:48:21.770

he still longs for her and tries to talk to her in the quiet of the poem, actually, as he is moving by ship towards Europe, south probably around the southern tip of both India and then Africa. Anyway, this is:

00:48:21.770 - 00:48:37.610

THE WIDOWER'S TANGO, he is obviously the widow and he is dancing with himself as he has seen people do in South America who are all alone and he recalls this love affair in a voice of anguish, terror, and longing, and I think it's an amazing

00:48:37.610 - 00:48:51.770

piece of work. Oh Maligna, by now you will have found the letter, by now you will have cried with rage, and you will live insulted the memory of my mother, calling her a rotten bitch and a mother of

00:48:51.770 - 00:49:08.210

dogs. By now you will have drunk alone, all by yourself, your afternoon tea with your eyes on my old shoes which are empty forever. And by now you will not be able to recall my illnesses, my dreams at night, my meals without cursing me out loud, as

00:49:08.210 - 00:49:25.010

though I was still there, complaining of the tropics, of the coolies Coringhis, of the poisonous fevers that did me such harm and of the horrendous English, whom I still hate. Maligna, the truth of it: how huge the night is, how lonely

00:49:25.010 - 00:49:40.400

the earth. I have gone back to single bedrooms, to cold lunches and restaurants, and I dropped my pants and my shirts on the floor as I used to, there are no hangers in my room and nobody's pictures are on the walls. How much of the shadow that is in my

00:49:40.400 - 00:49:56.270

soul I would give to have you back. The names of the months sounds to me like threats, and the word winter is like the sound of a lugubrious drum. Later on you will find buried near the coconut tree the knife which I hid there for fear you

00:49:56.270 - 00:50:10.340

would kill me, and now, suddenly, I would be glad to smell its kitchen steel used to the weight of your hand, the shine of your foot, under the dampness of the ground, among the leaf roots. In all the languages of men, only the poor

00:50:10.340 - 00:50:28.370

will know your name, and the dense earth does not understand your name made of impenetrable divine substances. Oh, thus it hurts me to think of the clear day of your legs in repose like waters of the sun made to stay in place, and the swallow that

00:50:28.370 - 00:50:46.820

lives in your eyes sleeping and flying, and the mad dog that you harbor in your heart, and that's also I see the dead who are between us and will be from now on, and I breathe ash and other ruin in the air itself. I would give this giant sea when for

00:50:46.820 - 00:51:05.810

your sudden breath and the vast solitary space that will be around me forever. I would give this wind off the giant sea for your hoarse breathing heard in the long nights unmixed with oblivion, becoming part of the atmosphere as the whip becomes

00:51:05.810 - 00:51:23.270

part of the horse's skin. And to hear you, urinate, in the darkness, at the bottom of the house, as though you were pouring a slow tremulous, silvery, obstinate honey. How many times over would I yield up this choir of shadows which I

00:51:23.270 - 00:51:38.000

possess now. And the clash of useless swords, which is audible in my soul, and the dove of blood alone in my forehead, calling to things which have vanished, to beings who have vanished, to substances incomprehensively inseparable

00:51:38.660 - 00:51:57.360

and lost. We are coming up to five of the hour, and I am going to ask you if you could just read the last half of that poem that we're going to end with. We now jump to the third part of,

00:51:57.360 - 00:52:16.920

"Residencias," and again, we will continue this Pablo Neruda party two weeks from tonight, when we will do poems from the end of the Civil War, the end of, "Residencias," or from, "Canto General," all the way up through the end of Neruda's

00:52:16.920 - 00:52:32.100

life. And we will end now with one of the traumatic moments of his life as we have read, and as I think you've heard, what we have been given here is a portrait of a man who is completely isolated within himself, and who reacts to the

00:52:32.100 - 00:52:44.910

world in a personal manner. What is going to change, and what's going to change with this next poem, is that he is going to become a man of the people, he is going to go out to the people, and he is going to become a member of the Communist

00:52:44.910 - 00:53:05.520

Party because of the horror he sees during the Spanish Civil War. This is the great change in his life and let me just get Gaspar who I'm giving a whole lot of mixed signals to here. Why don't we just read the Spanish from, "Generales

00:53:05.550 - 00:53:22.230

Traidores," okay. And then I will read, again, these poems are just so astonishing and they are so different. What we will read next week, or two weeks from tonight, will be totally different kinds of poems, very celebratory, very positive

00:53:22.230 - 00:53:36.750

poems, and very funny poems, and in many ways, even more accessible though these things beat an elemental self. So, here is Gaspar Rivera, who has been nice enough to come up here at night and read one of his favorite poets, reading only the

00:53:36.750 - 00:53:50.580

last part of this poem, which is entitled, Gaspar? Gaspar Rivera: EXPLICO ALGUNAS COSAS I SAY A FEW THINGS, or, I EXPLAIN A FEW THINGS Generales traidores: mirad mi casa muerta, mirad España rota:

00:53:51.630 - 00:54:08.070

pero de cada casa muerta sale metal ardiendo en vez de flores, pero de cada hueco de España sale España, pero de cada niño muerto sale un fusil con ojos, pero de cada crimen nacen balas que os hallarán un día el sitio del corazón.

00:54:08.820 - 00:54:26.460

Preguntaréis por qué su poesía no nos habla del sueño, de las hojas, de los grandes volcanes de su país natal? la sangre por las calles, venid a ver la sangre por las calles, venid a ver la sangre por las calles!

00:54:32.240 - 00:54:46.820

Morton Marcus: And this is the poem in which Naruto, who had always been active among people very gregarious man really comes out of the private self and out of the Depression of the rest of the book of residences and finds a totally new life which again,

00:54:46.820 - 00:54:59.480

as I said, we will go into two weeks from tonight, as we cover the second half of his career. The Spanish Civil War has broken out the poem: I EXPLAIN A FEW THINGS, from the third part of "Residences on

00:54:59.480 - 00:55:12.260

Earth." You will ask: and where are the lilacs? and the metaphysical blanket of poppies? and the rain that often struck your words filling them with holes and birds? I'm going to tell you all

00:55:12.260 - 00:55:26.360

that is happening to me. I lived in a quarter of Madrid with bells, with clocks, with trees. From there, one could see the dry face of Castille like an ocean of leather. My house was called the house of flowers, because it was bursting

00:55:26.360 - 00:55:43.430

everywhere with geraniums, it was a fine house with dogs and children. Raul, do you remember? Do you remember, Rafael? Federico, do you remember? Under the earth, do you remember my house with balconies with June lights smothered flowers in my

00:55:43.430 - 00:56:00.920

mouth? Brother, brother! Everything was great voices, the tang of merchandise, heaps of throbbing bread, markets of Arguelles quarter with its statue like a pale inkwell among the hanoch(?). The olive oil reached the ladles, a deep

00:56:00.920 - 00:56:17.810

throbbing of feet and hands filled the streets, meters, liters, sharp essence of life, fish piled up like a pattern of roofs and a cold sun where the vane grows weary, frenzied, fine ivory of potatoes, tomatoes stretching to the sea. And one

00:56:17.810 - 00:56:34.610

morning all was in flames. And one morning, the fires came out of the earth devouring people, and from then on, fire, gunpowder from then on, and from then on, blood. Bandits with airplanes and with Moors, bandits with rings and

00:56:34.610 - 00:56:48.920

duchesses, bandits with a black robe friars blessing came through the air to kill children, and through the streets, the blood of the children ran simply like children's blood. Jackals that the jackal would spurn, stones

00:56:48.920 - 00:57:07.520

that the dry thistle would bite while spitting them out, vipers and vipers would abhor. Facing you, I have seen the blood of Spain rise up to drown you in a single wave of pride and knives. Treacherous generals: look at my dead house, look at broken

00:57:08.000 - 00:57:27.800

Spain. But from each dead house comes burning metal instead of flowers, but from each hollow of Spain, Spain comes forth, but from each dead child comes a gun with eyes, but from each crime, bullets are born that will one day find where your heart lies.

00:57:29.840 - 00:57:51.200

You will ask, why does my poetry not speak to us of dirt, of leaves, of the great volcanoes of my native land? Come and see the blood in the streets. Come and see the blood in the streets. Come and see the blood in the streets!

00:57:54.560 - 00:58:12.080

Pablo Neruda, born July 12th, 1904, this has been Gaspar Rivera, Morton Marcus on the Poetry Show. Let me make some announcements before we leave. We will be back in two weeks with the second part of Pablo Neruda's career. KUSP though

00:58:12.080 - 00:58:28.700

thanks Nicholas Van Angle for providing a grant to help make this program possible. Nicholas Van Angle is a realtor in Carmel. And Playhouse, this Thursday at 9pm, radio drama from National Public Radio. Frankenstein Part Four, a

00:58:28.700 - 00:58:40.670

Frankenstein family nursemaid stands accused of the murder of young William Frankenstein. Dr. Frankenstein knows in his heart that the monster is guilty, but he cannot bring himself to reveal the truth of his awful creation.

00:58:42.260 - 00:58:59.780

This is Mort Marcus saying that you should stay tuned for "Out Front Outback" with Larry Blood and to tell you, because it is after the hour, that this is KUSP Santa Cruz, Monterey, Salinas at 88.9 to 91.7 on your dial.