Im Explaining a Few Things
Yoing to ask: and where are the lilacs?
and the poppy-petalled metaphysics?
and the raiedly spattering
its words and drilling them full
of apertures and birds?
Ill tell you all the news.
I lived in a suburb,
a suburb of Madrid, with bells,
and clocks, and trees.
From there you could look out
over Castilles dry face:
a leather o.
My house was called
the house of flowers, because in every y
geraniums burst: it was
a good-looking house
with its dogs and children.
Remember, Raul?
Eh, Rafel? Federico, do you remember
from uhe ground
my balies on which
the light of June drowned flowers in your mouth?
Brother, my brother!
Everything
loud with big voices, the salt of merdises,
pile-ups of palpitating bread,
the stalls of my suburb uelles with its statue
like a drained inkwell in a swirl of hake:
oil flowed into spoons,
a deep baying
of feet and hands swelled ireets,
metres, litres, the sharp
measure of life,
stacked-up fish,
the 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 m all that was burning,
one m the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
dev human beings --
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and 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
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like childrens blood.
Jackals that the jackals would despise,
stohat the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the vipers would abominate!
Face 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
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken Spain :
from every house burnial flows
instead of flowers,
from 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
the bulls eye of your hearts.
And youll ask: why doesnt his poetry
speak of dreams and leaves
and the great voloes of his native land?
e ahe blood ireets.
e and see
The blood ireets.
e ahe blood
Ireets!
Pablo Neruda