10-07-2016, 02:36 PM
Political poetry is the hardest poetry to write. The best poets are always political.
Some help change the world for the better, some are ambivalent at best (Ezra Pound).
And, if they are good enough, they die for it. Pablo Neruda did, what a wonderful man (and poet).
The Dictators - Pablo Neruda (Translator - D. Belitt)
An odor remains in the cane fields;
a mixture of blood and body, a penetrating
petal that brings nausea.
Between coconut palms lie the graves,
their ruined bones, speechless, festering.
In the palace, gleaming like a clock-dial,
a delicate henchman is conversing
with wineglasses, gold braid, and top hats.
Their gloved laughs redouble,
span the corridors, meet
the newly-killed voices, their swollen mouths,
their invisible tears.
Like a plant whose seeds fall endlessly on the earth,
whose large, blind leaves grow even without light;
hatred has grown scale on scale,
bludgeon by bludgeon,
with a snout full of silence and ooze.
In the ghastly water of the swamp,
vengeance is born.
Some help change the world for the better, some are ambivalent at best (Ezra Pound).
And, if they are good enough, they die for it. Pablo Neruda did, what a wonderful man (and poet).
The Dictators - Pablo Neruda (Translator - D. Belitt)
An odor remains in the cane fields;
a mixture of blood and body, a penetrating
petal that brings nausea.
Between coconut palms lie the graves,
their ruined bones, speechless, festering.
In the palace, gleaming like a clock-dial,
a delicate henchman is conversing
with wineglasses, gold braid, and top hats.
Their gloved laughs redouble,
span the corridors, meet
the newly-killed voices, their swollen mouths,
their invisible tears.
Like a plant whose seeds fall endlessly on the earth,
whose large, blind leaves grow even without light;
hatred has grown scale on scale,
bludgeon by bludgeon,
with a snout full of silence and ooze.
In the ghastly water of the swamp,
vengeance is born.
a brightly colored fungus that grows in bark inclusions