Among unraked leaves, with attic dust,
in the inchoate, from great heaves of entrails,
or else something also unsafe, mulled wine, a damsel's distress,
I muck out this sexual nightfall, with an astronomer's rusted tools, with salt.
Underneath there are bells, redundantly declaiming, prophecies of phlegm.
Escaping arrows, in truth, we enter the piranha's cave,
the fry-pan's maleficent redemption, among other things...
2 comments:
Hahaha!
Actually I have been thinking about this. You are good at the image chains but what impresses me about the WW and PN parallel is the rhythm.
Out of the cradle endlessly rocking,
Out of the mocking-bird’s throat, the musical shuttle,
Out of the Ninth-month midnight,
Como cenizas, como mares poblándose,
en la sumergida lentitud, en lo informe,
o como se oyen desde el alto de los caminos
SI solamente me tocaras el corazón,
si solamente pusieras tu boca en mi corazón,
tu fina boca, tus dientes,
I have not quantified this all, counted the feet and stresses and syllables, but PN really seems to follow WW in this regard. ?
The sea whisper’d me.
Neruda is choppy often, like "Por eso, en lo inmóvil, deteniéndose, percibir, / entonces, como aleteo inmenso, encima, / como abejas muertas o números/ ay, lo que mi corazón pálido no puede abarcar..."
That's what changes from Whitman (among other things, like the fact that it's in Spanish). Syntactic non-parallelism instead of parallelism. But yes, he does get that prosodic ideal from Whitman, and also achieves the larger than life voice that goes with it. Lorca does it too in Poeta en Nueva York.
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