Posts filed under ‘.South_America’
The Chilean Forest
by Pablo Neruda
(more…)Under the volcanoes, beside the snow-capped mountains, among the huge lakes, the fragrant, the silent, the tangled Chilean forest… My feet sink down into the dead leaves, a fragile twig crackles, the giant rauli trees rise in all their bristling height, a bird from the cold jungle passes over, flaps its wings, and stops in the sunless branches. And then, from its hideaway, it sings like an oboe… The wild scent of the laurel, the dark scent of the boldo herb, enter my nostrils and flood my whole being… The cypress of the Guaitecas blocks my way… This is a vertical world: a nation of birds, a plenitude of leaves… I stumble over a rock, dig up the uncovered hollow, an enormous spider covered with red hair stares up at me, motionless, as huge as a crab… A golden carabus beetle blows its mephitic breath at me, as its brilliant rainbow disappears like lightning… Going on, I pass through a forest of ferns much taller than I am: from their cold green eyes sixty tears splash down on my face and, behind me, their fans go on quivering for a long time… A decaying tree trunk: what a treasure!… Black and blue mushrooms have given it ears, red parasite plants have covered it with rubies, other lazy plants have let it borrow their beards, and a snake springs out of the rotted body like a sudden breath, as if the spirit of the dead trunk were slipping away from it… Farther along, each tree stands away from its fellows… They soar up over the carpet of the secretive forest, and the foliage of each has its own style, linear, bristling, ramulose, lanceolate, as if cut by shears moving in infinite ways… A gorge; below, the crystal water slides over granite and jasper… A butterfly goes past, bright as a lemon, dancing between the water and the sunlight… Close by, innumerable calceolarias nod their little yellow heads in greeting… High up, red copihues (Lapageria rosea) dangle like drops from the magic forest’s arteries… A fox cuts through the silence like a flash, sending a shiver through the leaves, but silence is the law of the plant kingdom… The barely audible cry of some bewildered animal far off… The piercing interruption of a hidden bird… The vegetable world keeps up its low rustle until a storm chums up all the music of the earth.
Anyone who hasn’t been in the Chilean forest doesn’t know this planet.
I have come out of that landscape, that mud, that silence, to roam, to go singing through the world.
The Cosmic Miracle of Trees: Astronaut Leland Melvin Reads Pablo Neruda’s Love Letter to Earth’s Forests
PERU: EL COLIBRÍ Y LA LLUVIA
Esta seca la tierra
sediento el monte
No se ve ni una nube en el horizonte
En el pasto agotado se mueren las flores
Colibrí, no hay nectar para sus pichones.
Ven lluvia ven, ven…
Dime Pachamama que debo hacer,
mis dos pajaritos tienen mucha sed.
La diosa responde, vuela hacia el mar.
Adios mis pichones, ya vuelve mamá.
Sale una orca del profundo mar,
con agua dulce una vasija llenará.
Colibrí con el agua vuela hacia su hogar,
sin saber que la sigue una nube del mar.
Ven lluvia, ven, ven…
Por fin la mamá llega hasta su nido
donde agonizan sus pichoncitos.
No le queda fuerzas para levantar
la vasija de barro que ha traido del mar.
Ven lluvia, ven, ven…
Un anciano llegó, quiere ayudar
más le tiembla la mano y derrama el agua.
Colibrí agotado, muerta de sed
su cabezita deja caer.
Ven lluvia, ven,ven…
En ese instante la nube del mar
llena de agua y empieza a llorar
Bebe la tierra, se abren las flores
Bebe la madre y sus pichones.
Ven lluvia, ven, ven…
Ven lluvia, ven, ven…
TheKittyCats 