Ode to Laziness
(From “Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon: Selected Poems of Pablo Neruda,” translated and edited by Stephen Mitchell)
Yesterday I felt that my ode wouldn’t
get up off the ground.
It was time, it should
at least
show a green leaf.
I scratched the earth: “Get up,
sister ode”
–I said to her–
“I promised to produce you,
don’t be scared of me,
I’m not going to step on you,
ode with four leaves,
ode for four hands,
you’ll have tea with me.
Get up,
I will crown you among the odes,
we’ll go out to the sea shore
on our bicycles.”
Nothing doing.
Then,
high up in the pines,
laziness
appeared naked,
she led me off dazzled
and sleepy,
she showed me on the sand
little broken pieces
of material from the ocean,
wood, seaweed, stones, feathers of seabirds.
I looked for yellow agates
but didn’t find any.
The sea
filled all spaces,
crumbling towers,
invading
the coasts of my country,
pushing forward
successive catastrophes of foam.
Alone on the sand
a ray opened
a ring of fire.
I saw the silvered petrels
cruise and like black crosses
the cormorants
nailed to the rocks.
I set free
a bee writhing in a spiderweb,
I put a little stone
in my pocket,
it was smooth, very smooth
like a bird’s breast,
meanwhile on the coast,
all afternoon,
sun and fog wrestled.
Sometimes
the fog was pregnant
with light
like a topaz,
at other times a moist
ray of sun fell,
and yellow drops fell after it.
At night,
thinking about the duties of my
fugitive ode,
I took off my shoes
by the fire,
sand spilled from them
and right away I was falling
asleep.
–Pablo Neruda
