Pablo Neruda's later poems are spare creations that do not turn on lush words or startling ideas, but subtle patterns of nuance and sound. Their pace is slow, and their rhythm therefor essential.
I picked up an excellent new translation of his poems that is wonderful to read, but gets heavy-handed at times. I made this retranslation by hewing very close to the original, choosing vivid words only when they're called for, and letting the sounds of the words and the structure do most of the work.
ODA AL OLOR DE AL LENA
Late, when the stars
opened into the cold
I opened the door.
The sea
gallops
in the night.
Like a hand
from the darkened house
comes strong
the scent
of firewood.
Visible is that scent
as if
the tree itself
were living.
As if still fragrant.
Visible
like a cloak.
Visible
as a broken branch.
I went
back within
the house
robed
in that balsamic
dark.
Above,
the sky
and its glittering stars
like stones, magnetic.
But the smell of the wood
drew me
by the heart
like fingers
like vines
like certain memories.
It was not the sharp smell
of pines,
no,
it was not the scored bark
of eucalyptus;
neither
was it
the green perfume
of the vineyard
but
something more subtle
that with such a fragrance
but once,
one time
only exists,
and there, among all the visible things of the world,
in my own
house, at night, beside the sea in winter
there awaited me
the smell
of the deepest rose,
the heart cut from the earth,
that entered me like a wave
unbound
from time
and lost itself within me
when I opened the door
of the night.
The checkout line at the grocery store has evolved over time from its earliest role as a mere supplier of last-minute candy. It still serves that original purpose, but it now does double duty as a magazine rack and miniature library, perhaps on the theory that standing in line is the only place where customers linger long enough to read. For the most part the titles here are candy, too, of the literary sort, and the psychological tone of the checkout line has held steady at the level of quick thrills.
But over the last few years something entirely new has quietly elbowed its way into this traditional space and claimed the prime territory closest to the register, and hence uppermost in our minds. It's three and a half square feet devoted not to pleasures, but to needs. Its contents are remarkably consistent from store to store, as if an optimum has been found and settled on. Look next time you go, and this is what you'll see:
And one thing more, reliably but most unexpectedly:
These are exemplars of three fundamental categories: heat, light and — what?
Cameras used to stand for memory; they preserved an image and went into a book, a individual record like personal memory, but permanent. Now prints are multiple, cameras are digital, and the camera has become chiefly a device to share images and not to keep them. They are at home in telephones, where they reach people, but like the voice rarely linger past the end of the conversation. Photographs are becoming, like sound, instant and ephemeral rather than gradual and permanent. They are the new and useful substitute for words, relieving us of the need for written description. They arrive like instant and personalized postcards with nothing more scribbled on the back than "Having fun", and "Wish you were here". Photos from the disposable camera dangling from the rack are not as swift to send, but they are almost certainly destined to be sent as well as saved. Pictures are now communication, and the camera part of the social event and no longer an objective observer of it.
Heat, light, communication. This is the new pyramid of needs that has been refined from the experience of tens of millions of shoppers, which is to say, all of humanity where shopping exists. It recalls Maslow's pyramid, but has surprising gaps at the bottom and this unexpected leap toward the top. Nothing on the rack here suggests shelter or security. You'll rarely find a rain poncho, and never a first-aid kit. The evidence of the checkout line is that, stripped to the essentials, the self wants food (maybe), then heat and light; and given these and no more wants to leap straight to the requital of the spiritual need for the richest possible communication.
I think that the checkout line reveals a wisdom deeper than Maslow's. It has examined more subjects, considered the problem longer, and has had to make a living on being right. It does agree with him; communication is a means that cuts across the whole range of spiritual ends, from social acceptance and self-esteem right up to the realization of the self if you are any kind of artist. But the fact that the camera can sit side by side with such utter basics as fire, warmth and light betrays the artificiality of the orderly pyramid. We do not want to climb higher by steps, but gain the top and leave out anything we can to get straight there. We want to live in a world of inward rewards.
We like our heat, and love our light. But we will give up food, do without shelter, and surrender all manner of material comfort to secure our spirits. We will skip eating to talk all night, lose sleep to watch the stars, endure the desert for the sake of visions, and fast to pray. We leave safe homes, put on parachutes, step into thin air and sometimes die. We kiss in the rain.
The human condition is romantic, not pragmatic: not to be as physically satisfied as possible but to be as dissatisfied as tolerable: to steal from the body to give to the spirit. Testimonies abound wherever men are determined to be happy or right. A monk's possessions are a robe, a bowl and a Bible. A soldier in the field carries socks, bullets and letters from home. For the rest of us, it is matches, batteries, and a camera.