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When it appeared in 1924, this work launched into the international spotlight a young and unknown poet whose writings would ignite a generation. W. S. Merwin’s incomparable translation faces the original Spanish text. Now in a black-spine Classics edition with an introduction by Cristina Garcia, this book stands as an essential collection that continues to inspire lovers and poets around the world.
Cristina García is the author of Dreaming in Cuban, which was nominated for a National Book Award.
The Morning is Full
The morning is full of storm
in the heart of summer.
The clouds travel like white handkerchiefs of good-bye,
the wind, traveling, waving them in its hands.
The numberless heart of the wind
beating above our loving silence.
Orchestral and divine, resounding among the trees
like a language full of wars and songs.
Wind that bears off the dead leaves with a quick raid
and deflects the pulsing arrows of the birds.
Wind that topples her in a wave without spray
and substance without weight, and leaning fires.
Her mass of kisses breaks and sinks,
assailed in the door of the summer's wind.
Es La Mañana Llena
Es la mañana lleno de tempestad
en el corazón del verano.
Como pañuelos blancos de adiós las nubes,
el viento las sacude con sus viajeras manos.
Innumerable el corazón del viento
latiendo sobre nuestro silencio enamorado.
Zumbando entre los árboles, orquestal y divino,
como una lengua llena de guerras y de cantos.
Viento que lleva rápido robo la hojarasca
y desvia las flechas latientes de los parajos.
Viento que le derriba en ola sin espuma
y sustancia sin peso, y fuegos inclinados.
Se rompe y se submerge su volumen de besos
combatido en la puerta del viento del verano.
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My Spanish is not what it should be, but I was able to read most of the poetry here in the original. For those who know no Spanish, do not be deterred. This volume is the work of not just one but two masterful poets. Merwin's translations are amazing and wholly recommendable. Striking images and a yearning spirit fill the English translations as well as Neruda's originals.
I was also caught off guard by poem XVI. I was reading along, thinking how I had not read poetry this full of longing and desire since I last read Tagore's "Gitanjali" ..., when lo and behold, Poem XVI is a Spanish paraphrase of a Tagore poem...small world.
Neruda's poems are of filled with a powerful Eros. Yet, to me, they fall a little short in comparison to those of Tagore (whose love is a spiritual longing). However, the comparison is clearly between two giants of the art.
I give "Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair" a strong recommendation.
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