Ode to Maize
America, from a grain
of maize you grew
to
with spacious lands
the o foam.
A grain of maize was yeography.
From the grain
a green lance rose,
was covered with gold,
to grace the heights
of Peru with its yellow tassels.
But, poet, let
history rest in its shroud;
praise with your lyre
the grain in its granaries:
sing to the simple maize i.
First, a fine beard
fluttered in the field
above the teeeth
of the young ear.
Then the husks parted
and fruitfulness burst its veils
of pale papyrus
that grains of laughter
might fall upon the earth.
To the stone,
in your journey,
you returned.
Not to the terrible stone,
the bloody
triangle of Mexi death,
but to the grinding stone,
sacred
stone of your kits.
There, milk and matter,
strength-giving, nutritious
eal pulp,
you were worked and patted
by the wondrous hands
of dark-skinned women.
Wherever you fall, maize,
whether into the
splendid pot of partridge, or among
try beans, you light up
the meal and lend it
your virginal flavor.
Oh, to bite into
the steaming ear beside the sea
of distant song and deepest waltz.
To boil you
as your aroma
spreads through
blue sierras.
But is there
no end
to your treasure?
In chalky, barren lands
bordered
by the sea, along
the rocky Chilean coast,
at times
only your radiance
reaches the empty
table of the miner.
Yht, your eal, your hope
pervades Americas solitudes,
and to hunger
your lances
are enemy legions.
Within your husks,
like gentle kernels,
our sober provincial
childres were nurtured,
until life began
to shuck us from the ear.
Pablo Neruda