Poem of the Week | May 22, 2017
Michael Straus: from Pablo Neruda’s “Grapes and the Wind” (translation)
Author’s note:
I was first introduced to Neruda’s poem Las Uvas y el Viento/Grapes and the Wind while an exchange student in high school in Santiago, Chile. I attended an experimental school run by the University of Chile during the heady period of freedom shortly before the election of Salvador Allende, an era that came swiftly to an end with the CIA-supported coup that overthrew him. The poem was written in the 1950s, when Neruda was forced into political exile from his country due to his membership in the Communist Party. The work is laced with the politics of the era, but is at the same time a lyrical love song to his country from afar. The work’s passion and imagery have stayed with me since my time in Chile and I finally found the time to undertake a translation, the poem never having previously been translated into English. This excerpt, though brief, captures much of the heart of the poem – Neruda’s sense of loss, even betrayal, coupled with his expectations for a renewed future.
I left my country
Pablo Neruda ©1954
Heirs of Pablo Neruda and Fundación Pablo Neruda ©1999
Trans. Michael Straus ©2016
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