Daily Sip - Ode to the Lemon

Yes, I'm on a Neruda kick this week. Yes, this poem also talks about nipples.

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Ode to the Lemon

From those lemon flowers
Set free
By the light of the moon
From that
Odor of a love
Frustrated,
Sunken in fragrance,
There came
From the Lemon tree its yellow,
From its planetary system
The lemons came down to the earth.

Tender merchandise!
Our shores filled up with it,
The markets
Of light, of gold
From a tree,
And we open up
The two halves
Of a miracle,
Congealed acid
Which ran
From the hemispheres
Of a star
And the most profound liquor
In nature,
Unchanging, alive,
Indestructible,
Born from the freshness
Of the lemon,
From its fragrant house,
From its acid, secret symmetry.

Inside the lemon the knives
Cut
A small
Cathedral,
The window hidden behind the altars
Opened to the light its glassy acids,
And in drops
Like topazes they were dripped
Onto the altars
By the architecture of freshness.

So when your hand
Squeezes the hemisphere
Of the cut
Lemon onto your plate,
A universe of gold,
You have poured out
One
Yellow cup
Full of miracles
One of the sweet-smelling nipples
Of the breast of the earth,
A ray of light that became a fruit,
The diminutive fire of a planet.

-Pablo Neruda

Freudian slip? I never realized how kinky Neruda's poems could be.

This and the last posted are not my favorites, though I like the choppiness of lines. Have you read SONNET VI or SONNET XVII? Maybe my favorites.

Never fear... I have found my missing book!

Jane, I'm not sure. I will look them up pronto pup.

I'm going to post XVIII in this same thread, because I like it heaps.

Sonnet XVII

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

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Makes my heart go "thud thud thud."

^ The first Neruda I ever read! Adore it.

This is Sonnet VI:

Lost in the woods, I cut off a swarthy bough
and thirstily lifted its whisper to my lips:
perhaps it was the voice of the weeping rain,
a broken bell or a rent heart.

Something that, from so far off, seemed to me
to be hidden deep down, covered by the earth,
a cry muffled by immense autumns,
by the moist, imperfect darkness of the leaves.

But there, waking from the dreams of the wood,
the hazel branch sang under my mouth
and its wondering odour climbed into my reason

as though I were suddenly sought by the roots
that I abandoned, the earth lost with my childhood,
and I stopped, stricken by the wandering aroma.

Thirsty for lemons now :p

Somehow this made me think of Homer Simpson and how he always thinks of food, ha ha ha! I could almost picture him reading the first post and then go "Mmmmhhh LEMONS mmhh"and drool all over the place.

They just make me wish I could read Spanish SO BAD.