The Words ~ From Pablo Neruda “Memoirs”
Translated by Mario Grignetti
Everything you want, yessir, but it is the words that sing, that soar and descend . . .
I bow to them. . .
I love them, I cling to them, I pursue them, I bite them, I melt them down . . .
I love words so much . . .
The unexpected ones . . .
The ones I gluttonously wait for, I stalk for, until all of a sudden - - they drop . . .
Beloved locutions . . .
They glitter like colored stones, they leap like platinum fish, they are foam, thread, metal, dew . . .
I run after certain words . . .
They are so beautiful I want to fit them all into my poem . . .
I catch them in mid-flight, as they buzz past, I trap them, clean them, peel them, I set myself in front of the dish, I feel them crystalline, vibrant, ember-like, vegetal, oily, like fruit, like algae, like agates, like olives . . .
And then I stir them up, I shake them, I drink them, I gulp them down, I mash them, I garnish them, . . .I free them . . .
I leave them like stalactites in my poem, like slivers of polished wood, like coals, like debris from a shipwreck, gifts from the surf . . .
Everything exists in the word . . .
A whole idea changes because a word shifts its place, or because another one sat down like a little queen inside a phrase that was not expecting her but obeys her . . .
They have shadow, transparency, weight, feathers, hair . . .
They have everything they gathered after so much rolling down the river, from so much wandering from country to country, from being roots so long . . .
They are extremely old and extremely recent . . .
They live in the hidden bier and in the budding flower . . .
What a good language mine is, what a good tongue we inherited from the fierce conquistadors . . .
They strode over the tremendous cordilleras, over the ruffled Americas seeking potatoes, sausages, beans, black tobacco, gold, corn, fried eggs, with a voracious appetite never again seen in the world . . .
They swallowed up everything, religions, pyramids, tribes, idolatries just like the ones they brought along in their big sacks. . . .
Wherever they went they razed the land . . .
But from the barbarians, from their boots, their beards, their helmets, their horseshoes, luminous words dropped like pebbles . . .
Words that remained here resplendent . . .
Our language. . .
We ended up losers . . .
We ended up winners . . .
They took the gold and they left us the gold . . .
They took everything and they left us everything . . .
They left us the words.