OF THE DESERT.
--PABLO NERUDA
This year,on september 23rd,the 37th anniverasary of Pablo Neruda's passing ,we return with poet to chile through his book:CANTO GENERAL DE CHILE,as 33 copper miners of ATACAMA DESET,who provide "The Nation's Salary"still trapped for the past six weeks.By reading Neruda's poem,they might feel stronger during next few weeks and be ready to return to Chile.
*ATACAMA:
Insufferable voice,disseminated
salt,substituted
ash,black bouquet
on whose extreme dewdrop the blind moon
rises,through grieving galleries of copper.
What matter ,what hollow swan plunges its naked agony into the sand
and hardens its slow liquid light?
What hard thunderbolt shatters its emerald
amid the indomitable stones until
the lost salt congeals?
Land,land
above the sea,above the air,above the gallop
of the horse woman full of coral:
heaping granary where wheat
sleeps in the bells'tremulous root:
O mother of the ocean!,maker
of blind jasper and golden silica:
upon your pure skin of bread,far from the forest,
nothing but your secret lines,
nothing but your sandy brow,
nothing but mankind's day and nights,
but beside the thistle's thirst,where
there's a submerged and forgotten paper,a stone
marks the deep cradles of sword and cup
indicates the calcium's sleeping feet.
from:CANTO GENERAL
