Retro Noir

My eyes went away from me
Following a dark girl who went by.

She was made of black mother of pearl
Made of dark purple grapes,
And she lashed my blood
With her tail of fire.

After them all I go.

A pale blonde went by
Like a golden plant
Swaying her gifts.
And my mouth went
Like a wave
Discharging on her breast
Lightning bolts of blood.

After them all I go.

But to you, without my moving,
Without seeing you, distant you,
Go my blood and my kisses,
My dark one and my fair one,
My broad one and my slender one,
My ugly one, my beauty,
Made of all the gold
And of all the silver,
Made of all the wheat
And of all the earth,
Made of all the water
Of sea waves,
Made for my arms
Made for my kisses,
Made for my soul.

Pablo Neruda, "The Fickle One"

Coloured Red

The street
filled with tomatoes,
midday,
summer,
light is
halved
like
a
tomato,
its juice
runs
through the streets.

In December,
unabated,
the tomato
invades
the kitchen,
it enters at lunchtime,
takes
its ease
on countertops,
among glasses,
butter dishes,
blue saltcellars.

It sheds
its own light,
benign majesty.

Unfortunately, we must
murder it:
the knife
sinks
into living flesh,
red
viscera
a cool
sun,
profound,
inexhaustible,
populates the salads
of Chile,
happily, it is wed
to the clear onion,
and to celebrate the union
we
pour
oil,
essential
child of the olive,
onto its halved hemispheres,
pepper
adds
its fragrance,
salt, its magnetism;
it is the wedding
of the day,
parsley
hoists
its flag,
potatoes
bubble vigorously,
the aroma
of the roast
knocks
at the door,
it's time!
come on!
and, on
the table, at the midpoint
of summer,
the tomato,
star of earth, recurrent
and fertile
star,
displays
its convolutions,
its canals,
its remarkable amplitude
and abundance,
no pit,
no husk,
no leaves or thorns,
the tomato offers
its gift
of fiery color
and cool completeness.

Pablo Neruda, "Ode to Tomatoes"
Coming to Buñol, Valencia, Spain, on August 26, 2015

Dragon's Breath

A dictator, hiding behind a nihilist's mask,
has killed and killed and killed,
pillaged and wasted,
but is afraid, he claims,
to kill a sparrow.
His smiling picture is everywhere:
in the coffeehouse, in the brothel,
in the nightclub, and the marketplace.
Satan used to be an original,
now he is just the dictator's shadow.
The dictator has banned the solar calendar,
abolished Neruda, Marquez, and Amado,
abolished the Constitution;
he's given his name to all the squares, the open spaces,
the rivers,
and all the jails in his blighted homeland.
He's burned the last soothsayer
who failed to kneel before the idol.
He's doled out death as a gift or a pledge.
His watchdogs have corrupted the land,
stolen the people's food,
raped the Muses,
raped the widows of the men who died under torture,
raped the daughters and widows of his soldiers
who lost the war,
from which, like rabbits in clover fields,
they had run away,
leaving behind corpses of workers and peasants,
writers and artists,
twenty-year-old children,
carpenters and ironsmiths,
hungry and burned under the autumn sky,
all forcibly led to slaughter,
killed by invaders, alien and homegrown.
The dictator hides his disgraced face in the mud.
Now he is having a taste of his own medicine,
and the pillars of deception have collapsed,
his picture is now underfoot,
trampled by history's worn shoes.
The deposed dictator is executed in exile,
another monster is crowned in the hapless homeland.
The hourglass restarts,
counting the breaths of the new dictator,
lurking everywhere,
in the coffeehouse, the brothel,
in the nightclub, and the marketplace.


2
From the Caribbean to China's Great Wall,
the dictator-dragon is being cloned.
When will you do it, St George?

- Abd al-Wahhab al-Bayyati, "The Dragon" (1996)