"Pido Silencio" or A Narcissistic Musing on Poetry, Time, and Silence

This quarter I am taking a class on contemporary Latin Amercan poetry. Thus far I've enjoyed just about everything we've read. I'd never heard of Olga Orozco, Juan Gelman, or Ernesto Cardenal before taking this class (or at least their names didn't carry any weight in my memory and were not tied to any image or poem that I could recall). Gonzalo Rojas was already on my radar and I've used the course as a great excuse to enter more into the poetry of José Emilio Pacheco. 

As a result of taking this course I've had an explosion of ideas, something that hadn't occurred since my days at the Be Why You. I originally wanted to compare what I perceive as distinct interpretations of the heraclitan notion of time in certain poems by Borges and Pacheco but I had an epiphany of sorts while we discussed Orozco's poems. My term paper will compare the  gnostic conception of the body of God in one or two poems by Borges and Orozco (Borges continues to haunt me from the center of my own labyrinth).

There are several reasons why I love poetry, here are two that I wrote in an e-mail to a freind: "... I love [that poetry] defamiliarizes, or prolongs our perception of, words and the passing of time. [...]. Perhaps, in way, poetry invites that silence and contemplation that we need in order to receive the Holy Ghost, or that same silence that nature offers us." Similar to what Sting said elsewhere in regards to the musical verse, I think the poetic verse breaks up time and words in a way that frames, invites, and even creates silence.

With that, friends, I offer you a poem by Neruda, that great master of verse and silence (English translation below). 

"Pido silencio"

Ahora me dejen tranquilo.
Ahora se acostumbren sin mí.

Yo voy a cerrar los ojos

Y sólo quiero cinco cosas,
cinco raices preferidas.

Una es el amor sin fin.

Lo segundo es ver el otoño.
No puedo ser sin que las hojas
vuelen y vuelvan a la tierra.

Lo tercero es el grave invierno,
la lluvia que amé, la caricia
del fuego en el frío silvestre.

En cuarto lugar el verano
redondo como una sandía.

La quinta cosa son tus ojos,
Matilde mía, bienamada,
no quiero dormir sin tus ojos,
no quiero ser sin que me mires:
yo cambio la primavera
por que tú me sigas mirando.

Amigos, eso es cuanto quiero.
Es casi nada y casi todo.

Ahora si quieren se vayan.

He vivido tanto que un día
tendrán que olvidarme por fuerza,
borrándome de la pizarra:
mi corazón fue interminable.

Pero porque pido silencio
no crean que voy a morirme:
me pasa todo lo contrario:
sucede que voy a vivirme.

Sucede que soy y que sigo.

No será, pues, sino que adentro
de mí crecerán cereales,
primero los granos que rompen
la tierra para ver la luz,
pero la madre tierra es oscura:
y dentro de mí soy oscuro:
soy como un pozo en cuyas aguas
la noche deja sus estrellas
y sigue sola por el campo.

Se trata de que tanto he vivido
que quiero vivir otro tanto.

Nunca me sentí tan sonoro,
nunca he tenido tantos besos.

Ahora, como siempre, es temprano.
Vuela la luz con sus abejas.

Déjenme solo con el día.
Pido permiso para nacer.

"I ask for silence"
(Translation Heidi Fischbach)

Now if you’d leave me in peace.
Now if you’d get on without me.

I am going to close my eyes

And I only want five things,
five favorite roots.

One is love without end.

Second is to see autumn.
I cannot be without leaves
flying and returning to earth.

Third is grave winter,
the rain I loved, the caress
of a fire in a wilderness of cold.

In fourth place is summer
round like a watermelon.

The fifth thing is your eyes,
Matilde, my love, my beloved,
I would not sleep without your eyes,
I don’t want to be without your seeing me:
I’d trade springtime
for your gaze still upon me.

My friends, all of that is what I want.
Nearly nothing and nearly everything.

And now if you wish you may go.

So much have I lived that one day
you’ll have to will yourselves to forget me,
erasing the blackboard of me:
my heart was endless.

But just because I ask for silence
don’t go thinking I’m about to die:
it’s quite the contrary:
as it turns out I’m going to be lived.

It just so happens that I am and I keep being.

I will not be dying for within me
grains will grow,
first the kernels that break through
the earth to see light,
but mother earth is dark:
and inside me I am dark:
I am like a well in whose waters
the night sky leaves her stars
and goes on alone through the fields.

This is about my having lived so much
that I want to live another much.

Never have I felt such resonance,
never have I had so many kisses.

Now, as always, it is early.
The light takes flight with her bees.

Leave me alone with this day.
I raise my hand to be born.