Words to Ponder #42
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Words to Ponder #42

Words to Ponder #42

From Pablo Neruda’s magnificent book of poems, Odes to Common Things, is this beauty (in English thanks to translator Ken Krabbenhoft).

“Ode to the Spoon”

Spoon,
scoop
formed
by man’s
most ancient hand,
in your design
of metal or wood
we still see
the shape
of the first
palm
to which
water
imparted
coolness
and savage
blood,
the throb
of bonfires and the hunt.

Little
spoon
in an
infant’s
tiny hand,
you raise
to his mouth
the earth’s
most
ancient
kiss,
silent heritage
of the first water to sing
on lips that later lay
buried beneath the sand.

To this hollow space,
detached from the palm of our hand,
someone
added
a make-believe wooden
arm,
and
spoons
started turning up
all over the world
in ever
more
perfect
form,
spoons made for
moving
between bowl and ruby-red lips
or flying
from thin soups
to hungry men’s careless mouths.

Yes,
spoon:
at mankind’s side
you have climbed
mountains,
swept down rivers,
populated
ships and cities,
castles and kitchens:
but
the hard part
of your life’s journey
is to plunge
into the poor man’s plate,
and into his mouth.

And so the coming
of the new life
that,
fighting and singing,
we preach,
will be a coming of soup bowls,
a perfect panoply
of spoons.
An ocean of steam rising from pots
in a world
without hunger,
and a total mobilization of spoons,
will shed light where once was darkness
shining on plates spread all over the table
like contented flowers.

Neruda, Pablo - AP Literature: Poetry - LibGuides at University High School
3 Comments
  • Jill Battale
    Posted at 05:42h, 03 December

    Thanks, Lo. Here’s another of his I like, especially the last stanza. Jill
    translated by Robert Bly

    Ode to My Socks

    Maru 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 though into
    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
    into 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.

  • Helen Abel
    Posted at 04:00h, 03 December

    I agree. So beautiful and moving. I have never read this one before. Thanks.

  • Ann Green
    Posted at 13:28h, 02 December

    Absolutely beautiful. Thank you, Lois.

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