I kept coming back to this one - Wings of Dreams:
There was something about it - prosaic yet extraordinary - that reminded me of a poem, and I wandered through words about wings or dreams or flight or soaring. I finally figured it out: it's ‘Memorial de Isla Negra’; Pablo Neruda talking about beginning to write poetry:
...and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire,
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and I suddenly saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open...
I love that idea of coming to words, bare and unaffected, and also the notion of 'forgotten wings' - I was recently struck by someone making the point that if you ask a group of four year olds "Who here can draw?" every hand shoots up with confidence; but by aged twelve, they've come to believe something entirely different about themselves.
And that's such a loss.
2 comments:
Thank God that Neruda did not forget his wings...or at least that he was aware of having lost them. Without this curiosity, this open perception, he would never have become such a great poet--or any kind of poet, for that matter.
If you really like him, check out Red Poppy at www.redpoppy.net/pablo_neruda.php. It's a non-profit set up to create a documentary about Neruda, publish his biography, and translate his works into English. To see our blog on Neruda’s literary activism, go to http://www.redpoppy.net/journal/Pablo_Neruda_Presente.html.
Thanks Katia - great site; great cause!
Of course, now that you mentioned Sonnet 17 in your blog - I've got to ask if you have a recommended English translation or the poem, or any definitive rendering of line 2: does 'arrows of carnation that fire shoots off' give the correct sense, or is 'propagates fire' more accurate - such things prey on my mind!!
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