EL QUINCENAL presents Neruda’s Grapes and the Wind /Las Uvas y el Viento. A translation by Michael Straus
Michael Straus lives in Mountain Brook, Alabama. Among other activities, he writes occasionally on Greek poetry and drama; is actively involved with a number of museums and other arts-related organizations; and recently completed the first English translation of Pablo Neruda’s long poem, Las Uvas y el Viento / Grapes and the Wind, a poem he first encountered as an exchange student in Santiago, Chile.
Pablo Neruda was the pen name of the Chilean poet, diplomat and politician Ricardo Reyes Basoalto (1904-73). Writing in a variety of modes including love poems and other lyrics, historical epics, political manifestos and a prose autobiography, Neruda won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971.
Excerpt from Grapes and the Wind / Las Uvas y el Viento.
Pablo Neruda ©1954
Heirs of Pablo Neruda and Fundación Pablo Neruda ©1999
Translation Michael Straus © 2017