Poem of the Week: Ode to the Book (II) - Pablo Neruda

Hi everyone,

Poem of the week this week is accompanied by a short film by Katie Sharpe (my very talented sister!).

But before we get to that, let's look at the poem. It's by one of my top three poets of all time - a Chilean poet whose lyrical style is sublime. Perhaps his most widely loved poems are his love poems and his odes. He liked to write odes to simple, everyday objects that are usually forgotten by poets (Ode to an Onion, to My Socks, to Laziness, to the Artichoke). This is his second Ode to the Book (he was a writer, of course he liked books!), and it exceeds my usual line-limit for the blogosphere. But never fear! Most lines are less than four words long, and many are a single word, so I make this exception for an exceptional poet.

Enjoy the poem, and then enjoy the short film it has inspired. And feel free to leave a comment.


Ode to the Book (II) (Oda al libro (II))
By Pablo Neruda

Book,
beautiful
book,
minuscule forest,
leaf
after leaf,
your paper
smells
of the elements,
you are
matutinal and nocturnal,
vegetal,
oceanic,
in your ancient pages
bear hunters,
bonfires
near the Mississippi,
canoes
in the islands,
later
roads
and roads,
revelations,
insurgent
races,
Rimbaud like a wounded
fish bleeding
thumping in the mud,
and the beauty
of fellowship,
stone by stone
the human castle rises,
sorrows intertwined
with strength,
actions of solidarity,
clandestine
book
from pocket
to pocket,
hidden
lamp,
red star.

We
the wandering
poets
explored
the world,
at every door
life received us,
we took part
in the earthly struggle.
What was our victory?
A book,
a book full
of human touches,
of shirts,
a book
without loneliness, with men
and tools,
a book
is victory.
It lives and falls
like all fruit,
it doesn't just have light,
it doesn't just have
shadow,
it fades,
it sheds its leaves,
it gets lost
in the streets,
it tumbles to earth.
Morning-fresh
book of poetry,
again
hold
snow and moss
on your pages
so that footsteps
and eyes
may keep carving
trails:
once more
describe the world to us,
the springs
in the middle of forest,
the high woodlands,
the polar
planets,
and man
on the roads,
advancing
in the jungle,
in the water,
in the sky,
in the naked solitude of the sea,
man
discovering
the ultimate secrets,
man
returning
with a book,
the hunter back again
with a book,
the farmer
plowing
with a book.