pero
tu hermoso
traje de primavera
es diferente,
el corazón sube a las ramas,
el viento mueve el día,
nada queda
Ode to Wine
Wine the color of day,
color of night,
wine with purple feet
or topaz blood,
wine,
star-child
of earth,
wine smooth
as a golden sword,
gentle
as rumpled velvet,
encased in the swirl-shell
of snail,
amorous, marine,
there’s never room for you in one cup,
one song, one man;
you are choral, gregarious,
reciprocal, to say the least.
At times
you feed on deadly
memories,
and on your wave
we go from grave to grave,
carver of an icy sepulcher,
and we weep
our transitory tears,
but
your beautiful
spring dress
is quite another matter,
heart rises through the limbs,
wind moves the day,
nothing remains
dentro de tu alma inmóvil.
El vino
mueve la primavera,
crece como una planta la alegría,
caen muros,
peñascos,
se cierran los abismos,
nace el canto.
Oh tú, jarra de vino, en el desierto
con la sabrosa que amo,
dijo el viejo poeta.
Que el cántaro de vino
al beso del amor sume su beso.
Amor mio, de pronto
tu cadera
es la curva colmada
de la copa,
tu pecho es el racimo,
la luz del alcohol tu cabellera,
las uvas tus pezones,
tu ombligo sello puro
estampado en tu vientre de vasija,
y tu amor la cascada
de vino inextinguible,
la claridad que cae en mis sentidos,
el esplendor terrestre de la vida.
Pero no sólo amor,
beso quemante
o corazón quemado
eres, vino de vida,
sino
amistad de los seres, transparencia,
coro de disciplina,
abundancia de flores.
in your stilled soul.
Wine
stirs spring,
swells like vegetal joy,
walls fall back
and great stones,
chasms are sealed
as song is born.
Oh you, jug of wine, in the wilderness,
and I with my sweetheart, my beloved.
Thus does the flowing wine
add to the kiss of love
a kiss of its own.
My love, your hip
suddenly
is the brimming curve
of the wine glass,
your breast is the cluster,
your long tresses luminous with spirits,
your nipples the grapes,
your navel the virgin seal stamped
upon the vessel of your belly,
and your love is the cascade
of inextinguishable wine,
the clarity that illuminates my senses,
the terrestrial splendor of life.
But you are not only love,
the sear of a kiss
or the blazing heart,
more than the wine of life,
for you are also the companionship
of essences, transparency,
the choir of discipline,
the multitudinous flowers.
Amo sobre una mesa,
cuando se habla,
la luz de una botella
de inteligente vino.
Que lo beban,
que recuerden en cada
gota de oro
o copa de topacio
o cuchara de púrpura
que trabajó el otoño
hasta llenar de vino las vasijas
y aprenda el hombre oscuro,
en el ceremonial de su negocio,
a recordar la tierra y sus deberes,
a propagar el cántico del fruto.
I love it when at table,
where we are talking,
the brilliance from a bottle
of vintner’s genius flashes forth.
Drink,
and remember in each
drop of gold
or cup of topaz
or spoonful of purple
how autumn worked
to fill the vessels with wine,
and through the rituals of his concerns
let the unsung man learn
how to remember the earth and his obligations,
how to propagate the canticle of the grape.
About the Translator
William Pitt Root’s numerous poetry collections include The Storm and Other Poems, Reasons For Pitt Root. Honors accorded his poetry, which appears in The Atlantic, New Yorker, The Nation, and Poetry, include grants from the Rockefeller and Guggenheim Foundations, and the National Endowment for the Arts; a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford and a United States/United Kingdom Exchange Artist Fellowship. Root’s work, published in twenty languages, has won the Stanley Kunitz Prize and Guy Owen awards, and three Pushcart Prizes.
Root’s academic career includes periods at Hunter College-CUNY, the University of Montana, Amherst College, Interlochen Arts Academy, New York University, and Distinguished Visiting Writer residencies at Pacific Lutheran and Wichita State Universities. Most recently he has served as the John C. Hodges visiting writer at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He and his wife, poet Pamela Uschuk, live primarily in the West with a cadre of four-legged companions and enjoy traveling widely to teach and read from their works at home and abroad.
As a child growing up where the Everglades met the Gulf of Mexico, Root often smuggled a radio into his bed nights so he could hear the late night Spanish broadcasts from Havana. “That music came from a part of the universe where people knew how to live their lives far more passionately than anyone I’d ever met. I was mesmerized and heartened by all that energy, all that poetry, as a kid. I still am.”
Acknowledgments
Many of these translations first appeared in slightly different versions in the following periodicals and anthologies: Anthology and Yearbook of Magazine Verse, Asheville Poetry Review, CutBank, Historical Mathematics Network Journal, International Virtual Institute for Historical Studies of Mathematics, Mississippi Mud, The Proud Word, and Telescope.
Wings Press was founded in 1975 by Joanie Whitebird and Joseph F. Lomax, both deceased, as “an informal association of artists and cultural mythologists dedicated to the preservation of the literature of the nation of Texas.” Publisher, editor and designer since 1995, Bryce Milligan is honored to carry on and expand that mission to include the finest in American writing—meaning all of the Americas, without commercial considerations clouding the decision to publish or not to publish.
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This first edition of Sublime Blue: Selected Early Odes of Pablo Neruda, translated by William Pitt Root, has been printed on 55 pound Edwards Brothers Natural Paper containing a high percentage of recycled fiber. Titles have been set in Colonna MT type, the text in Adobe Caslon type. All Wings Press books are designed and produced by Bryce Milligan.
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