Ode to Tomatoes (Oda al Tomate)

1The street
filled with tomatoes
midday,
summer,
5light is
halved
like
a
tomato,
10its juice
runs
through the streets.
In December,
unabated,
15the tomato
invades
the kitchen,
it enters at lunchtime,
takes
20its ease
on countertops,
among glasses,
butter dishes,
blue saltcellars.
25It sheds
its own light,
benign majesty.
Unfortunately, we must
murder it:
30the knife
sinks
into living flesh,
red
viscera,
35a cool
sun,
profound,
inexhausible,
pop ulates the salads
40of Chile,
happily, it is wed
to the clear onion,
and to celebrate the union
we
45pour
oil,
essential
child of the olive,
onto its halved hemispheres,
50pepper
adds
its fragrance,
salt, its magnetism;
it is the wedding
55of the day,
parsley
hoists
its flag,
potatoes
60bubble vigorously,
the aroma
of the roast
knocks
at the door,
65it's time!
come on!
and, on
the table, at the midpoint
of summer,
70the tomato,
star of earth,
recurrent
and fertile
star,
75displays
its convolutions,
its canals,
its remarkable amplitude
and abundance,
80no pit,
no husk,
no leaves or thorns,
the tomato offers
its gift
85of fiery color
and cool completeness. 

Sonnet XVII from One Hundred Love Sonnets (Cien sonetos de amor)

1I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,   

or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:   

I love you as one loves certain obscure things,   

secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

5I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries   

the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself,   

and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose   

from the earth lives dimly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,   

10I love you directly without problems or pride:

I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love,

except in this form in which I am not nor are you,   

so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,   

so close that your eyes close with my dreams.

No te amo como si fueras rosa de sal, topacio 
o flecha de claveles que propagan el fuego: 
te amo como se aman ciertas cosas oscuras, 
secretamente, entre la sombra y el alma. 


Te amo como la planta que no florece y lleva 
dentro de sí, escondida, la luz de aquellas flores, 
y gracias a tu amor vive oscuro en mi cuerpo 
el apretado aroma que ascendió de la tierra. 


Te amo sin saber cómo, ni cuándo, ni de dónde, 
te amo directamente sin problemas ni orgullo: 
así te amo porque no sé amar de otra manera, 


sino así de este modo en que no soy ni eres, 
tan cerca que tu mano sobre mi pecho es mía, 
tan cerca que se cierran tus ojos con mi sueño. 


Translated by Mark Eisner
Pablo Neruda, “One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII” from The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems, edited by Mark Eisner. Copyright © 2004 City Lights Books.


After reading this poem, I think that it describes love in its purest sense. It's a quiet, self-reflective kind of love for another person. Some of the lines such as when the speaker compares his love with a flower reminded me of a well-known bible verse: 1 Corinthians 13:4: "Love is patient and kind; it is not jealous or conceited or proud..."
I have also added a video at the bottom of one of my favorite poets reciting this sonnet, and I feel that I have gained a better understanding of the poem after listening to it.


Anaphora: Reptition of "I love you":
"I love you as one loves certain obscure things" (3)
"I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries" (5)
"I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,/I love you directly without problems or pride:/I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love" (9-11)
Hyperbole: "carnations that propagate fire" (2) Carnations don't release flames, but its vibrant red color can represent the fiery passion of love.
Enjambment:

"I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries   

the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself,   

and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose   

from the earth lives dimly in my body." (4-8)

I Explain A Few Things (Explico algunas cosas)

1You are going to ask: and where are the lilacs? and the poppy-petalled metaphysics? and the rain repeatedly spattering its words and drilling them full 5of apertures and birds? I'll tell you all the news. I lived in a suburb, a suburb of Madrid, with bells, and clocks, and trees. 10From there you could look out over Castille's dry face: a leather ocean. My house was called the house of flowers, because in every cranny 15geraniums burst: it was a good-looking house with its dogs and children. Remember, Raul? Eh, Rafel? Federico, do you remember 20from under the ground my balconies on which the light of June drowned flowers in your mouth? Brother, my brother! Everything 25loud with big voices, the salt of merchandises, pile-ups of palpitating bread, the stalls of my suburb of Arguelles with its statue like a drained inkwell in a swirl of hake: oil flowed into spoons, 30a deep baying of feet and hands swelled in the streets, metres, litres, the sharp measure of life, stacked-up fish, 35the texture of roofs with a cold sun in which the weather vane falters, the fine, frenzied ivory of potatoes, wave on wave of tomatoes rolling down the sea. And one morning all that was burning, 40one morning the bonfires leapt out of the earth devouring human beings - and from then on fire, gunpowder from then on, 45and from then on blood. Bandits with planes and Moors, bandits with finger-rings and duchesses, bandits with black friars spattering blessings came through the sky to kill children 50and the blood of children ran through the streets without fuss, like children's blood. Jackals that the jackals would despise, stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out, vipers that the vipers would abominate! 55Face to face with you I have seen the blood of Spain tower like a tide to drown you in one wave of pride and knives! Treacherous 60generals: see my dead house, look at broken Spain : from every house burning metal flows instead of flowers, 65from every socket of Spain Spain emerges and from every dead child a rifle with eyes, and from every crime bullets are born which will one day find 70the bull's eye of your hearts. And you'll ask: why doesn't his poetry speak of dreams and leaves and the great volcanoes of his native land? Come and see the blood in the streets. 75Come and see The blood in the streets. Come and see the blood In the streets!

We Are Many (Muchos Somos)

1Of the many men whom I am, whom we are,
I cannot settle on a single one.
They are lost to me under the cover of clothing
They have departed for another city.


5When everything seems to be set
to show me off as a man of intelligence,
the fool I keep concealed on my person
takes over my talk and occupies my mouth.


On other occasions, I am dozing in the midst
10of people of some distinction,
and when I summon my courageous self,
a coward completely unknown to me
swaddles my poor skeleton
in a thousand tiny reservations.


15When a stately home bursts into flames,
instead of the fireman I summon,
an arsonist bursts on the scene,
and he is I. There is nothing I can do.
What must I do to distinguish myself?
20How can I put myself together?


All the books I read
lionize dazzling hero figures,
brimming with self-assurance.
I die with envy of them;
25and, in films where bullets fly on the wind,
I am left in envy of the cowboys,
left admiring even the horses.


But when I call upon my DASHING BEING,
out comes the same OLD LAZY SELF,
30and so I never know just WHO I AM,
nor how many I am, nor WHO WE WILL BE BEING.
I would like to be able to touch a bell
and call up my real self, the truly me,
because if I really need my proper self,
35I must not allow myself to disappear.


While I am writing, I am far away;
and when I come back, I have already left.
I should like to see if the same thing happens
to other people as it does to me,
40to see if as many people are as I am,
and if they seem the same way to themselves.
When this problem has been thoroughly explored,
I am going to school myself so well in things
that, when I try to explain my problems,
45I shall speak, not of self, but of geography

I Like for You to be Still (Me gustas cuando callas)

1I like you you when you are quiet because it is as though you are absent, 
and you hear me from far away, and my voice does not touch you.
It looks as though your eyes had flown away
and it looks as if a kiss had sealed your mouth.
 
5Like all things are full of my soul
You emerge from the things, full of my soul.
Dream butterfly, you look like my soul,
and you look like a melancoly word.
 
I like you when you are quiet and it is as though you are distant.
10It is as though you are complaining, butterfly in lullaby.
And you hear me from far away, and my voice does not reach you:
let me fall quiet with your own silence.
 
Let me also speak to you with your silence
Clear like a lamp, simple like a ring.
15You are like the night, quiet and constellated.
Your silence is of a star, so far away and solitary.

I like you when you are quiet because it is as though you are absent.
Distant and painful as if you had died.
A word then, a smile is enough.
20And I am happy, happy that it is not true.

Biography & Background

At first, I thought that Pablo Neruda  only wrote love poems, and I heard a ballad of one of his poems for a listening test in AP Spanish - I think it was "Me Gustas Cuando Callas" or "I like for you to be still". Anyways, it was beautiful, as well as the background music accompanying it.
After doing a bit of research about him, I never knew that he was also a significant political figure as a diplomat and as a communist. He was also friends with other famous Hispanic literary figures such as Gabriela Mistral, another Chilean poet, and Federico Garcia Lorca, a Spanish playwright. Mistral, who was a teacher at a local girl's school when Neruda was a boy, recognized Neruda's talent and encouraged him to write poems, unlike his father. "Pablo Neruda" was first a pseudonym for the young poet, Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto, to hide his identity from his father, choosing the name Neruda in memory of the Czechoslovak poet Jan Neruda. Later, he legally changed his name to Pablo Neruda.

What is also surprising is that one of the first books that Neruda published is the most famous of all his works: Veinte poemas de amor y una cancion desesperada, or Twenty Poems of Love and a Song of Despair.
As quoted from Poetry Foundation.org: "While other Latin American poets of the time used sexually explicit imagery, Neruda was the first to win popular acceptance for his presentation. Mixing memories of his love affairs with memories of the wilderness of southern Chile, he creates a poetic sequence that not only describes a physical liaison, but also evokes the sense of displacement that Neruda felt in leaving the wilderness for the city. 'Traditionally,' stated Rene de Costa in The Poetry of Pablo Neruda, 'love poetry has equated woman with nature. Neruda took this established mode of comparison and raised it to a cosmic level, making woman into a veritable force of the universe.'"

A a fun fact that I found was that Neruda always wrote in green ink because it was the color that he equated with hope, but I'm not entirely sure if this is true because I saw it on wikipedia without a reference link...

A brief biography of Pablo Neruda can be found here: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1971/neruda-bio.html
And a more thorough one here:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/pablo-neruda