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I need the sea because it teaches me

Neblina, espacio o cielo, la vaga red del día

crece con fríos sueños, sonidos y pescados,

el vapor de las islas combate la comarca

palpita el mar sobre el luz de Chile.

 

Fog, space, or sky, the vague net of the day

swells with cold dreams, noises, fish,

the steam of the islands fights against the land,

the ocean trembles over the light of Chile.

 

- from 100 Love Sonnets / Cien sonetos de amor (LXXIV)

Today is the 100th anniversary of Pablo Neruda's birth. Here's the Washington Post on Neruda's love of the sea:

He loved the playful anarchy of the sea -- creative, destructive, ceaselessly moving. He loved the marriage of wind, water and sand, and found inspiration in the crashing fury and freedom of the waves, the seabirds on the coast, the endlessness of blue sky. "I need the sea because it teaches me," he wrote. "I move in the university of the waves." He loved how the sea forever renewed itself, a renewal echoed in his work as well as in his life. He felt that creating poetry was like constantly being born. So let us head for the sea to recite his poems -- "Let us uncork all our bottled up happiness," as he put it in "Celebration" -- and come back refreshed, deepened and enlarged.

Some links posted at Poetry Hut:

* Neruda at 100 (Washington Post)

Also:

* The Nobel Foundation

* Neruda site at Universidad de Chile

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