Keeping Quiet                      

                         ~                        

                          Pablo Neruda

Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.


This one time upon the earth,
let's not speak any language,
let's stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.


It would be a delicious moment,
without hurry, without locomotives,
all of us would be together
in a sudden uneasiness.


The fishermen in the cold sea
would do no harm to the whales
and the peasant gathering salt
would look at his torn hands.


Those who prepare green wars,
wars of gas, wars of fire,
victories without survivors,
would put on clean clothing
and would walk alongside their brothers
in the shade, without doing a thing.


What I want shouldn't be confused
with final inactivity:
life alone is what matters,
I want nothing to do with death.


If we weren't unanimous
about keeping our lives so much in motion,


if we could do nothing for once,
perhaps a great silence would
interrupt this sadness,
this never understanding ourselves
and threatening ourselves with death,
perhaps the earth is teaching us
when everything seems to be dead
and then everything is alive.


Now I will count to twelve
and you keep quiet and I'll go.

-from Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon
Translated by Stephen Mitchell


Read this poem in Spanish

A song of despair- Pablo Neruda

My first attempt at making a video had one clear result- a new-found appreciation for all that we watch on youtube. Very frustrating experience indeed, and will probably want to tweak it, but at least there is some version available until someone posts a better one! :) Can't wait for that!

The origin, longing and beauty of love- Pablo Neruda and Stephen Trask

"The memory of you emerges from the night around me. 

The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea. 

Deserted like the dwarves at dawn. 

It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one! 

Cold flower heads are raining over my heart. 

Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked. 

In you the wars and the flights accumulated. 

From you the wings of the song birds rose. 

You swallowed everything, like distance. 

Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank! 

It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss. 

The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse. 

Pilot's dread, fury of blind driver, 

turbulent drunkenness of love, in you everything sank!

 

In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded. 

Lost discoverer, in you everything sank! 

You girdled sorrow, you clung to desire, 

sadness stunned you, in you everything sank! 

I made the wall of shadow draw back, 

beyond desire and act, I walked on. 

Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost, 

I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you. 

Like a jar you housed infinite tenderness. 

and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar. 

There was the black solitude of the islands, 

and there, woman of love, your arms took me in. 

There was thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit. 

There were grief and ruins, and you were the miracle. 

Ah woman, I do not know how you could contain me 

in the earth of your soul, in the cross of your arms!

 

How terrible and brief my desire was to you! 

How difficult and drunken, how tensed and avid.  

Cemetery of kisses, there is still fire in your tombs, 

still the fruited boughs burn, pecked at by birds. 

Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs, 

oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bodies. 

Oh the mad coupling of hope and force 

in which we merged and despaired. 

And the tenderness, light as water and as flour. 

And the word scarcely begun on the lips. 

This was my destiny and in it was my voyage of my longing, 

and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank! 

Oh pit of debris, everything fell into you, 

what sorrow did you not express, in what sorrow are you not drowned! 

From billow to billow you still called and sang. 

Standing like a sailor in the prow of a vessel.

You still flowered in songs, you still brike the currents. 

Oh pit of debris, open and bitter well. 

Pale blind diver, luckless slinger, 

lost discoverer, in you everything sank! 

It is the hour of departure, 

the hard cold hour which the night fastens to all the timetables. 

The rustling belt of the sea girdles the shore. 

Cold stars heave up, black birds migrate. 

Deserted like the wharves at dawn. 

Only tremulous shadow twists in my hands. 

Oh farther than everything. Oh farther than everything. 

It is the hour of departure. Oh abandoned one!"

~Pablo Neruda "Song of Despair"

Creativity

"To be creative means to be in love with life. You can be creative only if you love life enough that you want to enhance its beauty, you want to bring a little more music to it, a little more poetry to it, a little more dance to it." Osho

Poetry Arrived...

And it was at that age...Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no, they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names
my eyes were blind,
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 suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
I felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke free on the open sky.

 

-Pablo Neruda

 

"Creativity has nothing to do with any activity in particular -- with painting, poetry, dancing, singing -- it has nothing to do with anything in particular. Anything can be creative; it is you who brings that quality to the activity. Activity itself is neither creative nor uncreative. You can paint in an uncreative way, you can sing in an uncreative way. You can clean the floor in a creative way, you can cook in a creative way.

Creativity is the quality that you bring to the activity you are doing. It is an attitude, an inner approach -- how you look at things.

So the first thing to be remembered is, don't confine creativity to anything in particular. It is the person who is creative -- and if a man is creative then whatsoever he does, even if he walks, you can see in his walking there is creativity. Even if he sits silently and does nothing -- even non-doing will be a creative act. Buddha sitting under the Bodhi Tree doing nothing is the greatest creator the world has ever known.

Once you understand it -- that it is you, the person, who is creative or uncreative -- then the problem of feeling like you are uncreative disappears.

Not everybody can be a painter -- and there is no need also. If everybody is a painter the world will be very ugly; it will be difficult to live! Not everybody can be a dancer, and there is no need. But everybody can be creative.

Whatsoever you do, if you do it joyfully, if you do it lovingly, if your act of doing it is not purely economic, then it is creative. If you have something growing out of it within you, if it gives you growth, it is spiritual, it is creative, it is divine.Love what you do. Be meditative while you are doing it -- whatsoever it is! irrelevant of the fact of what it is. Then you will know that even cleaning can become creative. With what love! Almost singing and dancing inside. If you clean the floor with such love, you have done an invisible painting. You lived that moment in such delight that it has given you some inner growth. You cannot be the same after a creative act.

Creativity means loving whatsoever you do -- enjoying, celebrating it! Maybe nobody comes to know about it -- who is going to praise you for cleaning the floor? History will not take any account of it; newspapers will not publish your name and picture -- but that is irrelevant. You enjoyed it. The value is intrinsic.

So if you are looking for fame and then you think you are creative -- if you become famous like Picasso, then you are creative -- then you will miss. Then you are, in fact, not creative at all; you are a politician, ambitious. If fame happens, good. If it doesn't happen, good. It should not be the consideration. The consideration should be that you are enjoying whatsoever you are doing. It is your love affair.

If your act is your love affair, then it becomes creative. Small things become great by the touch of love and delight.

But if you believe you are uncreative, you will become uncreative -- because belief is not just belief. It opens doors; it closes doors. If you have a wrong belief, then that will hang around you as a closed door. If you believe that you are uncreative, you will become uncreative because that belief will obstruct, continuously negate, all possibilities of flowing. It will not allow your energy to flow because you will continually be saying, "I am uncreative."

This has been taught to everybody. Very few people are accepted as creative -- a few painters, a few poets, one in a million. This is foolish! Every human being is a born creator. Watch children and you will see: all children are creative. By and by, we destroy their creativity. By and by, we force wrong beliefs on them. By and by, we distract them. By and by, we make them more and more economical and political and ambitious.

When ambition enters, creativity disappears -- because an ambitious man cannot be creative, an ambitious man cannot love any activity for its own sake. While he is painting he is looking ahead; he is thinking, 'When am I going to get a Nobel Prize?' When he is writing a novel he is looking ahead, he is always in the future -- and a creative person is always in the present.

We destroy creativity. Nobody is born uncreative, but we make ninety-nine percent of people uncreative. But just throwing the responsibility on the society is not going to help. You have to take your life in your own hands. You have to drop wrong conditionings. You have to drop wrong, hypnotic auto-suggestions that have been given to you in your childhood. Drop them! Purify yourself of all conditionings... and suddenly you will see you are creative.

To be, and to be creative, are synonymous. It is impossible to be and not to be creative. But that impossible thing has happened, that ugly phenomenon has happened, because all your creative sources have been plugged, blocked, destroyed, and your whole energy has been forced into some activity that the society thinks is going to pay.

Our whole attitude about life is money-oriented. And money is one of the most uncreative things one can become interested in. Our whole approach is power-oriented and power is destructive, not creative. A man who is after money will become destructive, because money has to be robbed, exploited; it has to be taken away from many people, only then can you have it. Power simply means you have to make many people impotent, you have to destroy them -- only then will you be powerful, can you be powerful.

Remember: these are destructive acts. A creative act enhances the beauty of the world; it gives something to the world, it never takes anything from it. A creative person comes into the world, enhances the beauty of the world -- a song here, a painting there. He makes the world dance better, enjoy better, love better, meditate better. When he leaves this world, he leaves a better world behind him. Nobody may know him, somebody may know him, that is not the point --but he leaves the world a better world, tremendously fulfilled because his life has been of some intrinsic value.

Money, power, prestige, are uncreative -- not only uncreative but destructive activities. Beware of them! And if you beware of them, you can become creative very easily. I am not saying that your creativity is going to give you power, prestige, money. No, I cannot promise you any rose gardens. It may give you trouble. It may force you to live a poor man's life. All that I can promise you is that deep inside you will be the richest man possible; deep inside you will be fulfilled; deep inside you will be full of joy and celebration. You will be continuously receiving more and more blessings. Your life will be a life of benediction.

It is possible that outwardly you may not be famous, you may not have money, you may not succeed in the so-called world. But to succeed in this so-called world is to fail deeply, is to fail in the inside world. And what are you going to do with the whole world at your feet if you have lost your own self? What will you do if you possess the whole world and you don't possess yourself? A creative person possesses his own being; he is a master. "

- From "Creativity: Unleashing the Forces Within" by Osho

Pablo Neruda video poems

There is something truly magical about the poetry of Pablo Neruda. Especially if you listen to it in the original language, put a background music to it and let your eyes be filled with beautiful images from nature. Here are some video poems of his I have found, welcome to a journey of magic and deep emotion.

Love Sonnets IX

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,
and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.

Leaning Into The Afternoons

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 move like the sea 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 beats on your marine 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 mare Shedding blue tassels over the land.

Leaning into the afternoons I cast my sad nets Towards your oceanic eyes.

I Like For You To Be Still

I like for you to be still
It is as though you are absent
And you hear me from far away
And my voice does not touch you
It seems as though your eyes had flown away
And it seems that a kiss had sealed your mouth
As all things are filled with my soul
You emerge from the things
Filled with my soul
You are like my soul
A butterfly of dream
And you are like the word: Melancholy

I like for you to be still
And you seem far away
It sounds as though you are lamenting
A butterfly cooing like a dove
And you hear me from far away
And my voice does not reach you
Let me come to be still in your silence
And let me talk to you with your silence
That is bright as a lamp
Simple, as a ring
You are like the night
With its stillness and constellations
Your silence is that of a star
As remote and candid

I like for you to be still
It is as though you are absent
Distant and full of sorrow
So you would've died
One word then, One smile is enough
And I'm happy;
Happy that it's not true