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De aquellos azahares
desatados
por la luz de la luna,
de aquel
olor de amor
exasperado,
hundido en la fragancia,
saliò
del limonero el amarillo,
desde su planetario
bajaron a la tierra los limones.

Tierna mercadería!
Se llenaron las costas,
los mercados,
de luz, de oro
silvestre,
y abrimos
dos mitades
de milagro,
ácido congelado
que corría
desde los hemisferios
de una estrella,
y el licor más profundo
de la naturaleza,
intransferible, vivo,
irreductible,
naciò de la frescura
del limòn,
de su casa fragante,
de su acida, secreta simetría.
En el limòn cortaron
los cuchillos
una pequeña
catedral,
el ábside escondido
abriò a la luz los ácidos vitrales
y en gotas
resbalaron los topacios,
los altares,
la fresca arquitectura.

Así, cuando tu mano
empuña el hemisferio
del cortado
limòn sobre tu plato,
un universo de oro
derramaste,
una
copa amarilla
con milagros,
uno de los pezones olorosos
del pecho de la tierra,
el rayo de la luz que se hizo fruta,
el fuego diminuto de un planeta.

From blossoms
released
by the moonlight,
from an
aroma of exasperated
love,
steeped in fragrance,
yellowness
drifted from the lemon tree,
and from its planetarium
lemons descended to the earth.

Tender yield!
The coasts,
the markets glowed
with light, with
unrefined gold;
we opened
two halves
of a miracle,
congealed acid
trickled
from the hemispheres
of a star,
the most intense liqueur
of nature,
unique, vivid,
concentrated,
born of the cool, fresh
lemon,
of its fragrant house,
its acid, secret symmetry.

Knives
sliced a small
cathedral
in the lemon,
the concealed apse, opened,
revealed acid stained glass,
drops
oozed topaz,
altars,
cool architecture.

So, when you hold
the hemisphere
of a cut lemon
above your plate,
you spill
a universe of gold,
a
yellow goblet
of miracles,
a fragrant nipple
of the earth's breast,
a ray of light that was made fruit,

the minute fire of a planet.

Pablo Neruda

Pen-name of the Chilean poet Ricardo Neftalì Reyes Basoalto (1904- 1973), chosen to celebrate Jan Neruda ( 1834-1891), the Czech bard of poor people. The poet started writing poems since when he was a teenager, influenced  from the decadent Aestheticism. From 1933, when Residencia en la tierra was published, the described reality started to assume gloomy, harrowing tones, result of his experience with the reality of the Middle East. His work became surreal, now oriented to the emotional subjectivism of expressionism. But it was the direct experience of the Spanish Civil war which influenced his perception of the world and of life, taking him to champion the political and social fight for the defence of man’s rights. When he came back to Chile he devoted himself to politics. Member of the Communist Party, he was elected senator, but was also exiled because of a political trial which saw him opposed to the Premier, Gonzales Vileda. He repaired to Italy, where in 1952 he published in Naples the famous Los versos del capitan. The same year he came back to his homecountry and he published “Odas elementales”, where he celebrates the humblest objects and aspects of everyday life.

He supported the party of Salvador Allende and in 1971 he was awarded with the Nobel Prize for literature and the Lenin Prize for Peace. He died a short time before Pinochet rose to power.

 
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