Leaning into the Afternoons (1924) By Pablo Neruda

Leaning into the Afternoons (1924)
By Pablo Neruda (Chile)
Translated from the Spanish by W. S. Merwin
Leaning into the afternoons I cast my sad nets
towards your oceanic eyes.
There in the highest blaze my solitude lengthens and flames,
its arms turning like a drowning man’s.
I send out red signals across your absent eyes
that wave like the sea or the beach near a lighthouse.
You keep only darkness, my distant female,
from your regard sometimes the coast of dread emerges.
Leaning into the afternoons I fling my sad nets
to that sea that is thrashed by your oceanic eyes.
The birds of night peck at the first stars
that flash like my soul when I love you.
The night gallops on its shadowy mare1
shedding2 blue tassels3 over the land.
Inclinado en las tardes
por Pablo Neruda
Inclinado en las tardes tiro mis tristes redes
a tus ojos oceánicos.
Pablo Neruda
(Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto)
Allí se estira y arde en la más alta hoguera
1904-1973
mi soledad, que da vueltas los brazos como un náufrago.
Hago rojas señales sobre tus ojos ausentes
que olean como el mar a la orilla de un faro.
Sólo guardas tinieblas, hembra distante y mía,
de tu mirada emerge a veces la costa del espanto.
Inclinado en las tardes echo mis tristes redes
a ese mar que sacude tus ojos oceánicos.
Los pájaros nocturnos picotean las primeras estrellas
que centellean como mi alma cuando te amo.
Galopa la noche en su yegua sombría
desparramando espigas azules sobre el campo.
1
Night’s horse is translated as mare because it female-- not because it is intended to suggest a
nightmare (as in a dream), an idiom peculiar to English.
2
in the sense of to spread (infinitive: desparramar)
3
W.S. Merwin renders espigas as tassels, but it would be more accurate to say that espigas are
tassel shaped-- which is to say, shafts or rays radiating outward from some central mass. The most
common use of the word would be to refer to the blossoming ends of plant stems, but Neruda, in this
context, is more probably describing shafts or rays of blue light (as in the bluish quality of
light after the sun has gone down).