Mark Strand, taken from “A Poet’s Alphabet”

“N is for Neruda, who was a genius but in whose writing beauty and banality are inextricably mixed.  His poems are a sort of wishful thinking.  To read him is to participate in the verbal correction of what are universally perceived as social or natural inequities.  Mundane items, modified by adjectives denoting the rare or celestial, are elevated to a realm of exceptional value.  A toad is melacholy, wine is intelligent, a lemon is like a cathedral.  He is a cosmetician of the ordinary.  When we read him, we are happy because everything has attained to a condition of privilege.  The universe is good after all.  Neruda’s verbal utopia, depending on one’s gullibility, is a harmless antidote to a harrowing century.  His genial reductions have moved people to simple and accommodating attitudes towards poetry who otherwise would have no use for it.”
—Mark Strand, taken from “A Poet’s Alphabet” in The Weather of Words: Poetic Invention (Alfred A. Knopf, 2000).

N come Neruda, che era un genio, ma nella cui scrittura  bellezza e banalità sono inestricabilmente intrecciate. Le sue poesie sono un desiderio irrealizzabile. Leggerlo è come partecipare alla correzione verbale di quelle che sono universalmente percepite ineguaglianze sociali o naturali. Soggetti triviali,  modificati da aggettivi che denotano la rarità o il celestiale, sono innalzati ad un regno di eccezionale valore.

Pablo Neruda

One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII

By Pablo Neruda

Translated By Mark Eisner

I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,   

or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:   

I love you as one loves certain obscure things,   

secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries   

the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself,   

and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose   

from the earth lives dimly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,   

I love you directly without problems or pride:

I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love,

except in this form in which I am not nor are you,   

so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,   

so close that your eyes close with my dreams.

Pablo Neruda, “One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII” from The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems, edited by Mark Eisner. Copyright © 2004 City Lights Books.

Source: The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems (City Lights Books, 2004)