Thinking of him flings me from these plains
to the nearest body
of water whose mist smells of salt and life
the unrestrained passion
and ****** of sea.
The book, Odes to Common Things,
a gift of a dear friend
who knew not the arousal,
the seed of near sensual desire
it would plant in me
like the buttery aroma of a woman’s hair
or the taste of her moist lips.
Even a thought of Neruda
takes me to the stormy stirrings
wrought from the ***** of the Pacific.
and sounding on the shores of Chile.
How could the writing of a man
a continent away
foment in my chest
a fervor akin
to a spiritual awakening?
I read him in English
but feel the thump
of his Latin heart
in my body.
Jun 24, 2024
Jun 24, 2024 at 12:25 AM UTC
Thinking of him flings me from these plains
to the nearest body
of water whose mist smells of salt and life
the unrestrained passion
and ****** of sea.
The book, Odes to Common Things,
a gift of a dear friend
who knew not the arousal,
the seed of near sensual desire
it would plant in me
like the buttery aroma of a woman’s hair
or the taste of her moist lips.
Even a thought of Neruda
takes me to the stormy stirrings
wrought from the ***** of the Pacific.
and sounding on the shores of Chile.
How could the writing of a man
a continent away
foment in my chest
a fervor akin
to a spiritual awakening?
I read him in English
but feel the thump
of his Latin heart
in my body.
I read that his book, translated into English as Residence on Earth, was born of Neruda’s feelings of alienation. It seems that a large part of me feels as if I have been on the margins of society and maybe that is why I feel that thumping of Neruda’s heart within me. Spanish poet Garcia Lorca calls Pablo “a poet closer to death than to philosophy, closer to pain that to insight, closer to blood than to ink. “A poet filled with mysterious voices that fortunately he himself does not know how to decipher.” * I thank oldpoet MK https://hellopoetry.com/MK/ and his poem Broadcasting the Seed of Poems https://hellopoetry.com/poem/4845320/broadcasting-the-seed-of-poems/ for the inspiration for this poem.
“The Thumping of a Latin Heart,” Copyright 2024 by Glenn Currier
Written 6-23-24
*From: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/pablo-neruda
