Today is the Third Annual Bloggers’ (Silent) Poetry Reading for the Feast of St. Brigid. (Year One; Year Two)
A Smell of Cordwood
Pablo Neruda
Later, when stars
opened out to the cold,
I opened the door
Night:
on an ocean
of galloping hooves.
Then from the dark
of the house, like a hand,
that savage
aroma
of wood on the woodpile.
An odor
that lives
like a tree,
a visible odor.
As if cordwood pulsed like a tree.
Vesture
made visible
A visible
breaking of branches.
I turned back
to
the house
in the circle
of darkening
balsam.
Beyond,
a sparkle
of motes in the sky,
like lodestones.
But the wood-smell
took hold of
my heart,
like a hand and its fingers,
like jasmine,
like a memory cherished.
Not harrowing
pine-odor,
not that way,
not slashed
eucalyptus,
not like
the green
exhalation of arbors —
but
something more recondite,
a fragrance
that gives itself
once, and once
only,
among all things visible,
a world
or a house, a night
by the wintering water;
that awaited me there,
occult in the smell,
of the rose,
an earth-heart plucked out,
dominion
that struck like a wave,
a sundered
duration,
and was lost in my blood
when I opened the door
of the night.
I just put a Pablo Neruda book on my request list at the library, I think I heard of him first from Slow Panic (Jodi)
“Night on an ocean of galloping hooves”…just beautiful
Very nice indeed!
Very nice! I’m going to have to look for Pablo Neruda.
Lovely.
beautiful and happy Imbolc
I posted mine also:)
I love Neruda !
Great poem. I’m going to have to try and read some more Neruda 🙂
I haven’t read that one. Do you know what collection it is in? I love it. Growing up in a logging town, the smell of fresh-cut wood still appeals to me, even though logging doesn’t.
I can almost smell the woodsmoke myself.
My contribution is up also!
(((hugs)))
Beautiful! And if I was more on top of things, I would have read your blog on Friday and remembered about this on Saturday! 🙂
Lovely.
pretty. I love the stars in the night as well. I wonder if our cedar trees are anything like the smell he is describing? *sigh* I can’t wait for a warm night to take baby out and look at stars while talking to her about them.
So he’s written more than an ode to socks? Who knew? 😉 Great poem, for Feb especially.
oh how did you know, that Pablo Neruda is one of my favorite poets?
thanks.