“I touch your feet in the shade, your hands in the light,/ and on the flight your peregrine eyes guide me / Matilde, with kisses your mouth taught me / my lips came to know fire…”
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Thus begins the long-awaited “Then Come Back: The Lost Neruda Poems”, which is composed of 21 poems found by Neruda’s foundation “lost” among a life’s worth of manuscripts. The number of poems recalls the poet’s immortal “Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada”. But skimming the pieces (for I will soon have to savor them one by one, slowly and without rush), I am transported back to the desolation of Neruda’s “Residence on Earth”, the lightning in his jealous “Captain’s Verses”, the unceasing childlike wonder behind his odes, his patriotic and ceremonial songs, his elemental presence, and last but not the least, the tenderness he has for people, the world, and things.
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With his every word, the tide continues to both caress and lash upon the shore, gulls spread their wings as wide as the horizon, flowers bloom and rot pregnant with the premonition of fruit.
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Soon I will have to finally get on with my plan of finishing Neruda’s biblical “Canto General” and get through all of his odes, but even then, when the translation for his “Crepusculario” comes out next year, I feel I will have to begin again from the start.
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Publisher: Copper Canyon Press, translated by Forrest Gander, cover photo by Sam Falk/New York Times/Getty Images.
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