New York based Brazilian singer Luciana Souza has released a CD consisting 10 poems of Pablo Neruda set to piano (and occasional percussion) accompaniment with music composed by herself. This is a really terrific CD that I found serendipitously. While a couple of poem/songs sound a little showtuney most are quite melancholic and she sounds very much like a female Leonard Cohen for the most part. I recommend it strongly for those who like poetry set to music. All the poems were translated by Neruda scholars and sung completely in English.
I am transcribing a couple of poem/songs below:
House
Perhaps this is the house in which I lived
When neither I, nor earth, existed
When everything was moon or stone or shadow
With the still light unborn
This stone could then have been
My house, my windows, or my eyes.
This granite rose recalls
Something that lived in me, or I in it,
A cave, a universe of dreams inside the skull:
cup or castle, boat or birth.
I touch the rocks tenacious thrust,
It's bulwark pounded in the brine
And I know that flaws of mine subsisted here,
Wrinkled substances that surfaced
From the depths into my soul,
And stone I was, stone shall be, and for this
Caress this stone that has not died for me:
It's what I was, and shall be – the tranquility
Of struggle stretched beyond the brink of time.
Memory
I have to remember everything,
Keep track of blades of grass, the threads
Of the untidy event, and
The houses, inch by inch,
The long lines of the railway,
The textured face of pain.
If I should get one rosebush wrong
And confuse night with a hare,
Or even if one whole wall
Has crumbled in my memory,
I have to make the air again,
Steam, the earth, leaves
Hair and bricks as well
The thorns which pierced me,
The speed of the escape.
Take pity on the poet.
I was always quick to forget
And in those hands of mine
Grasped only the intangible
And unrelated things,
Which could only be compared
By being non-existent.
The smoke was like an aroma,
The aroma was like smoke
The skin of a sleeping body
Which woke to my kisses;
But do not ask me the date
Or the name of what I dreamed-
I cannot measure the road
Which may have had no country,
Or that truth which changed,
Which the day perhaps subdued
To become a wandering light
Like a firefly in the dark.
Neruda on CD/Luciana Souza
Yes Sandra I found out it was his 100th birthday after getting this CD. It has made me interested enough now to search out a book of his poetry - translated of course. Strangely enough, he has many lines that appeals to the scientist in me....
"It's what I was and shall be - the tranquility
of struggle stretched beyond the brink of time."
[the greatest wars and battles I think are fought at a pace so slow that man cannot measure and are for eternity - the rest is only for the moment or an age]
"Other days will come. The silence
of plants and of planets will be understood."
"You are the trembling of time, which passes
between the vertical light and the darkening sky."
It is interesting that he took the pen name Neruda after Czech poet Jan Neruda. So Mr. Robert Zimmerman was not the first....
"It's what I was and shall be - the tranquility
of struggle stretched beyond the brink of time."
[the greatest wars and battles I think are fought at a pace so slow that man cannot measure and are for eternity - the rest is only for the moment or an age]
"Other days will come. The silence
of plants and of planets will be understood."
"You are the trembling of time, which passes
between the vertical light and the darkening sky."
It is interesting that he took the pen name Neruda after Czech poet Jan Neruda. So Mr. Robert Zimmerman was not the first....
Neruda is above all the poet of love Kush. But he shows love and humility in all his poems that are related with very wide amount of topics including the scientist you name, he has also a strong political commitment.
I have not seen any book of him in english but if I do I will let you know.........
I have not seen any book of him in english but if I do I will let you know.........
