Your choices were divine girls, I love the poems. This one is my favorite. I am almost positive I’ve posted it before, but it’s so good it deserves another post. And being able to read pablo neruda’s poems in the native form is one of the main reasons I’m pursuing Spanish at school. Well that and the whole “I’m a mexican” thing. This translation by the way is done by a teacher of mine from Emerson, who also wrote the book “half the house” which was an amazing book that I’ve mentioned before and I think the whole world should read.<\/p>\n
I always wondered what this poem might be like translated by a different person, but I haven’t been able to find it anywhere else. I want the original Spanish version.<\/p>\n
Anyway, here it is:<\/p>\n
Don’t Ask Me
\nby Pablo Neruda (tr. R Hoffman)<\/p>\n
My heart is worn out
\nwith knowing so many things,
\nas if I were lugging rocks
\nof different sizes in a sack,
\nor as if rain is falling
\nceaselessly in my memory.<\/p>\n
Don’t ask me.
\nI don’t know what to say.
\nI have no idea what happened.<\/p>\n
Nobody else knew either,
\nso I kept going, in a fog,
\nconvincing myself that nothing had occurred,
\nlooking for fruit in the streets,
\nideas in the fields,
\nand I came to the conclusion
\neveryone was right–
\nI have been asleep too long.<\/p>\n
So let them go ahead and load me down,
\nnot only rocks this time but shadows, too,
\nand not only shadows but blood.<\/p>\n
So that’s how things are with me, boy,
\nbut they’re also not like that at all
\nbecause, in spite of everything, I’m alive,
\nmy health is excellent,
\nboth my fingernails and my soul are still growing,
\nI come and go across frontiers,
\nmake claims, take readings, get my bearings.
\nIf they want to know more,
\nI get confused about where I’ve been,
\nBut if they think they hear grief’s howl
\nAround my house, they’re wrong.
\nLove is clear weather,
\nWeeping is time wasted.<\/p>\n
So, about what I remember
\nand about what I don’t,
\nabout what I know and used to know,
\nand all I’ve forgotten
\nof what is by now long gone,
\nabout the dead, who never heard from me,
\nand wanted, maybe, to see me,
\nthey had best not ask. Instead<\/p>\n
let them put a hand here on my vest
\nand they’ll feel me trembling,
\na big sack of heavy rocks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Your choices were divine girls, I love the poems. This one is my favorite. I am almost positive I’ve posted it before, but it’s so good it deserves another post.… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-random"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.loafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.loafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.loafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.loafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.loafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.loafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.loafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.loafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.loafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}