Have you ever been dawdling, flipping the pages of a book of poetry and you read something that just stops your heart for a second? Do you find the substance and rhythm of the words so breathtaking that you have to stop and read it over and over? And are you compelled to share it and read it aloud to someone?
Pablo Naruda, he does that to me!
Sweetness Always by Pablo Neruda
Why such harsh machinery?
Why, to write down the happenings
and people of every day,
must poems be dressed up in gold,
in old and grim stone?
I prefer verses of felt or feather
which scarcely weigh, soft verses
with the intimacy of beds
where people have loved and dreamed.
I prefer poems stained
by hands and everydayness.
Verses of pastry that melt
into milk and sugar in the mouth,
air and water to drink,
the bites and kisses of love.
I long for eatable sonnets,
poems of flour and honey.
Vanity keeps nudging us
to lift ourselves skyward
or to make deep and useless
tunnels underground.
So we forget the joyous
love-needs of our bodies.
We forget about pastries.
We are not feeding the world.
In Madras a long time since,
I saw a sugary pyramid,
a tower of confectionery--
one level after another,
and in the construction, rubies,
and other blushing delights,
medieval and yellow.
Someone soiled his hands
to cook up so much sweetness.
Brother poets from here
and there, from earth and sky,
from Medellín, from Veracruz,
Abyssinia, Antofagasta,
do you know how to make a honeycomb?
Let’s forget about all that stone.
Let your poetry fill up
the equinoctial pastry shop
our mouths long to devour--
the mouths of all the children
and the poor adults also.
Don’t go on without seeing,
relishing, understanding
so many hearts of sugar.
Don’t be afraid of sweetness.
With us or without us,
sweetness will go on living
and is infinitely alive,
and forever being revived,
for it’s in the mouth,
whether singing or eating,
that sweetness belongs.