Like starry blooms on a new firmament in July ~

Stillness. There are so many ways to describe it. Something that stretches itself to the most distant mountain-top, where footsteps crunch in the snow or a phenomenon that can match blackness under the blindfold. But Neruda in his poem had a completely different and unique perspective:

I Like For You To Be Still 

I like for you to be still

It is as though you are absent

And you hear me from far away

And my voice does not touch you

It seems as though your eyes had flown away

And it seems that a kiss had sealed your mouth

As all things are filled with my soul

You emerge from the things

Filled with my soul

You are like my soul

A butterfly of dream

And you are like the word: Melancholy

I like for you to be still

And you seem far away

It sounds as though you are lamenting

A butterfly cooing like a dove

And you hear me from far away

And my voice does not reach you

Let me come to be still in your silence

And let me talk to you with your silence

That is bright as a lamp

Simple, as a ring

You are like the night

With its stillness and constellations

Your silence is that of a star

As remote and candid

I like for you to be still

It is as though you are absent

Distant and full of sorrow

So you would've died

One word then, One smile is enough

And I'm happy;

Happy that it's not true

Our frame of reference is the title of Neruda's poem. Choose your own form or write in free verse, if preferred. I look forward to reading what you guys come up with. Please do visit others and remember to comment on their poems. Have fun!🌻

The Tuesday Platform

March Days Return With Their Covert Light

March days return with their covert light,
and huge fish swim through the sky,
vague earthly vapours progress in secret,
things slip to silence one by one.
Through fortuity, at this crisis of errant skies,
you reunite the lives of the sea to that of fire,
grey lurchings of the ship of winter
to the form that love carved in the guitar.
O love, O rose soaked by mermaids and spume,
dancing flame that climbs the invisible stairway,
to waken the blood in insomnia’s labyrinth,
so that the waves can complete themselves in the sky,
the sea forget its cargoes and rages,
and the world fall into darkness’s nets. 
 ~ Pablo Neruda

I have always wondered where Neruda got his inspiration from when it comes to writing poetry, and admire the way his words reach deep into the soul. What impresses me the most about this poem is its sense of mystery  — that the beloved is somehow a means to the transcendent as one puts his emotions into the bare code of language. The lines; "O love, O rose soaked by mermaids and spume,
dancing flame that climbs the invisible stairway," is nothing less than poetic brilliance as it describes the intensity with which one undergoes a life-changing experience.

Welcome to the Tuesday Platform, the weekly open stage for sharing poems in the Imaginary Garden. Please link up a poem, old or new, and spend some time this week visiting the offerings of our fellow writers.

SHARE * READ * COMMENT * ENJOY

Get Listed for May: Pablo Neruda

From Goodreads

Writing, reading, and commenting fatigue lingers from the April poem-fest.

So, straight to this month's Get Listed prompt.

I have winnowed the list from the (translated) poems of Pablo Neruda, specifically, from the bilingual edition Pablo Neruda - Selected Poems (Houghton Mifflin, 1970).

As a reminder, please write a new poem for this prompt using at least 3 of the list words (or reasonable variants), post it to your own site, and link to that specific poem (not just your blog) in Mr. Linky, below.

The List:

from "Poet's Obligation", page 429 (links to full poem at PoemHunter.com):

fragment, insistent, withdrawing, sea

from "They Come for the Islands (1493)", page 195 (links to full poem at Google Books):

clay, gnawed, empty, knife

from "I'm Explaining a Few Things", page 151 (PoemHunter.com again):

suburb, face, house, blood

The prompt will remain open so please frequently revisit your fellow writers - and it's good form to comment on their pens, if you would have them visit and read yours. Thanks for participating.

~ M

What Sparked Your Poetic Heart?

Welcome to the first day of “Poems in April”, dear Toads. 30 prompts in 30 days, and I give you my oath that this is not an April Fools’ Day joke. In fact, today’s prompt covers a topic that is serious and fun and that tends to say with us: our poetic beginnings.

I found my spark while reading Memoirs, by Pablo Neruda, five years ago. The following words left me shaking (I know; a tad melodramatic, but histrionics should be allowed when the emotions are true):

“…it’s the words that sing, they soar and descend… I bow to them… I love them, I cling to them, I run them down, I bite into them, I melt them down… I love words so much… The unexpected ones… The ones I wait for greedily or stalk until, suddenly, they drop… Vowels I love… They glitter like colored stones, they leap like silver fish, they are foam, thread, metal, dew… I run after certain words… They are so beautiful that I want to fit them all into my poem… I catch them in midflight, as they buzz past, I trap them, clean them, peel them, I set myself in front of the dish, they have a crystalline texture to me, vibrant, ivory, vegetable, oily, like fruit, like algae, like agates, like olives… And I stir them, I shake them, I drink them, I gulp them down, I mash them, I garnish them, I let them go… I leave them in my poem like stalactites, like slivers of polished wood, like coals, pickings from a shipwreck, gifts from the waves… Everything exists in the word…” ~ Memoirs, by Pablo Neruda

I’ve used the cover of a Spanish edition because the English translation cuts the title down to just Memoirs. And I wanted to share the whole thing with you: I Confess that I Have Lived, Memories. So much is said in those words…

Your poetic mission, if you choose to accept it, is to write a new poem inspired by the first poem, poet or written work that sparked your poetry. Please make sure that your link goes directly to the poem, not your homepage. Visit other Toads and have a serious blast.  

A Toad's Favourite Poem ~ Kim Nelson

Recently embarking on a minimalist path, I re-read this familiar Neruda piece and felt a new message and meaning. Entitled "Ode to My Socks,"  the poem is essentially an ode to the perfection and value of NOW, a declaration regarding the beauty and function of the ordinary. It is now a new favourite of mine. I hope you share my appreciation.

Ode to My Socks
by Pablo Neruda

Mara Mori brought me

a pair of socks

which she knitted herself

with her sheepherder's hands,

two socks as soft as rabbits.

I slipped my feet into them

as if they were two cases

knitted with threads of twilight and goatskin,

Violent socks,

my feet were two fish made of wool,

two long sharks

sea blue, shot through

by one golden thread,

two immense blackbirds,

two cannons,

my feet were honored in this way

by these heavenly socks.

They were so handsome for the first time

my feet seemed to me unacceptable

like two decrepit firemen,

firemen unworthy of that woven fire,

of those glowing socks.

Nevertheless, I resisted the sharp temptation

to save them somewhere as schoolboys

keep fireflies,

as learned men collect

sacred texts,

I resisted the mad impulse to put them

in a golden cage and each day give them

birdseed and pieces of pink melon.

Like explorers in the jungle

who hand over the very rare green deer

to the spit and eat it with remorse,

I stretched out my feet and pulled on

the magnificent socks and then my shoes.

The moral of my ode is this:

beauty is twice beauty

and what is good is doubly good

when it is a matter of two socks

made of wool in winter.

Editorial Note:
Pablo Neruda was the pen name of the Chilean writer and communist politician Ricardo Eliecer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto. He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1971 and is the author of The Heights of Macchu Picchu and World's End.

Two Birthdays in July - The Sonneteers

In researching poets born in July, I happened upon a lucky coincidence: two poets born 600 years apart who have made the sonnet their form of choice.

Francesco Petrarch
Public Domain

The first is Francesco Petrarch, born on 20 July 1304 in the city of Arezzo, Italy. He is credited historically with the development of the sonnet form, having written 317 poems based on the rules established by 13th Century poet, Guittone of Arezzo.

Gli Occhi Di Chi' Io Parlai

Those eyes, 'neath which my passionate rapture rose, 
The arms, hands, feet, the beauty that erewhile 
Could my own soul from its own self beguile, 
And in a separate world of dreams enclose, 
The hair's bright tresses, full of golden glows, 
And the soft lightning of the angelic smile 
That changed this earth to some celestial isle, 
Are now but dust, poor dust, that nothing knows. 
And yet I live! Myself I grieve and scorn, 
Left dark without the light I loved in vain, 
Adrift in tempest on a bark forlorn; 
Dead is the source of all my amorous strain, 
Dry is the channel of my thoughts outworn, 
And my sad harp can sound but notes of pain.
(Translated by Thomas Wentworth Higginson)

The Petrarchan sonnet, at least in its Italian-language form, generally follows a set rhyme scheme, which runs as follows:
a b b a a b b a c d c d c d.
The first eight lines, or octave, do not often deviate from the abba abba pattern, but the last six lines, or sestet, frequently follow a different pattern, such as cde cde, cde ced, or cdc dee. Each line also has the same number of syllables, usually 11 or 7 by Petrarch.  Source

Pablo Neruda
Public Domain

The second poet being featured today has written many sonnets in the Petrarchan form. Pablo Neruda (born 12 July 1904) was a Chilean poet, diplomat, political activist, and communist refugee- to name a few of his incarnations. Throughout his career he integrated private and public concerns, and was known as the people’s poet. During his life Neruda received numerous prestigious awards, including the International Peace Prize in 1950 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. He is considered to be among the greatest Latin-American poets of all time.  Source

tumblr
This link provides additional quotes from Neruda's work.

What I find fascinating about reading Neruda's sonnets (many more can be found HERE) in English, is the absence of a rhyme scheme and loss of the iambic meter, which translators have not been at pains to carry over. What is left is the essence of the poem, the imagery, the words and the structure of octave and sestet, which Neruda further splits up into two quatrains and two tercets. This seems to offer a more modern approach to writing in a form that is 7 centuries old, and in the past, I have attempted to write my English poetry in a 'Nerudan' style. (Example HERE)

Our challenge today (and I apologize if it is not so 'mini') is to write a sonnet, choosing either the classic style of Francesco Petrarch, or in the style of Pablo Neruda, as his poems appear in translation. The Sunday Challenge is posted on Saturday at noon CST to allow extra time for the form challenge. 

We stipulate that only poems written for this challenge may be added to the Mr Linky.  Management reserves the right to remove unrelated links, but invites you to share a poem of your choice on Open Link Monday.

A Toad's Favo(u)rite ~ When words touched me

Hello everyone ~     

As some of you know, I am very new to writing poetry (less than 3 years).  Growing up, I was more drawn to reading short stories & non-fiction books.  I probably read the entire collection of Nancy Drew and Agatha Christie's mystery books, then moved to Robert Ludlum's books and historical romance books in our school's library.   

I was however drawn to love poems and would pen romantic words now & then when I was inspired.  In the midst of managing a full family nest & work in the insurance field, I didn't think about poetry until I discovered that my second son was into writing contemporary street poetry and blogging about it. He encouraged me to explore the creative side of me and the rest is history.

One of my favorite writers and the inspiration for some of my love poems is Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (1904-1973). I am drawn to his words though I am aware that I have not yet read his best work as some of them are written in his native language.  (I now regret wasting 4 years of Spanish classes in my high school years.)   Among his many passionate words, I adore this translated poem entitled In You The Earth:    

Little

rose,
roselet,
at times,
tiny and naked,
it seems
as though you would fit
in one of my hands,
as though I’ll clasp you like this
and carry you to my mouth,
but
suddenly
my feet touch your feet and my mouth your lips:
you have grown,
your shoulders rise like two hills,
your breasts wander over my breast,
my arm scarcely manages to encircle the thin
new-moon line of your waist:
in love you loosened yourself like sea water:
I can scarcely measure the sky’s most spacious eyes
and I lean down to your mouth to kiss the earth.

Here is another beautiful reading by Ralph Fiennes - Ode to the Sea:

My all-time favorite though is this :       

And it was at that age ... Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names,
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire,
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind. 

Whenever I read it, I always see something new in his words and his lines just lift me to a place I can't describe.   Thank you for reading this post and wishing you all Happy Tuesday. 

Grace (aka Heaven)