Ode to the Coastal Flowers/ Oda a Las Flores de la Costa

By PABLO NERUDA

 

The Isla Negra wildflowers
are blooming,
they have no names, some
seem like sand crocuses,
others
illuminate
the ground with yellow lighting.

 

I’m a pastoral poet.

 

I feed myself
like a hunter;
near the sea, at night,
I build a fire.

 

Only this flower, only this
marine solitude;
and you, glad,
simple, like an earthly rose.

 

Life
begged me to be a fighter;
I organized my heart around struggle,
and keeping hope alive:
I’m a brother
to man, to everyone.
My two hands
are named duty and love.

 

I stare
at the coastal
stones,
while the flowers that lasted
through oblivion
and winter
to raise a tiny ray
of light and fragrance
to tell me farewell
yet again
farewell to the sand,
the wood,
the fire
of the forest,
the sand
it hurts to walk along.
I’d rather stay here,
not on the streets.
I’m a pastoral poet.

 

And duty and love are my two hands.

 

 

Translated by Ilan Stavans

 

Pablo Neruda, a renowned Chilean poet, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. 

[Purchase your copy of Issue 05 here]

Ode to the Coastal Flowers/ Oda a Las Flores de la Costa

Related Posts

Hall of Mirrors

November 2023 Poetry Feature: Virginia Konchan and Gabriel Spera

GABRIEL SPERA
Gracefully we hold each other / architects and optimists / always at arm’s length like / congenital dreamers / tango masters slinkily coiled / bright candles in a hall of mirrors / whatever I propose you propose / to conquer repeating and repeating / the opposite.

a golden field of wheat

Thresher Days

OSWALDO VARGAS
The wheat wants an apology, / for taking me this long / to show my wrists / to the thresher boy. // Finally a summer where he asks how my parents are / and my jaw is ready, / stretched open so he can hear about them, / easier. // I may look different after, / I will need a new name.

People gather in protest in front of a building; a man (center) holds up a red flag

Picket Line Baby

AIDEED MEDINA
White women give my father shaded looks./ Bringing babies to do their dirty work,/ mumbled in passing. // I am paid in jelly doughnuts / for my day on the boycott. // My dad leads my baby brother / to the front of the grocery store doors / for a meeting with the manager.