Appreciation of Neruda’s poems -2

 

Appreciation of Neruda’s poems -2

Dreams are very abstract and unfathomable for anyone. Very rarely one recalls a dream clearly and in detail. The poem ‘Nocturnal collection’ is a very long poem on the poet’s dream and dreamers as well, in general. The poem certainly challenges the creative side of a reader moving to greater heights in imagination and abstractness.

 

“It is the wind that shakes the months, the whistle of a train,

the march of temperature over the bed,”

In these lines the wind is both tangible and abstract. It shakes months and the whistle of a train alike.

 

“Sleeping Cadavars that often

dance, tied to the pace of my heart

what opaque cities we are passing through”

The poet’s command over the genre poetry to take the reader into his abstract world is evident in the above lines.

 

 

“Comrades whose heads rest on barrels,

in a derelict fugitive vessel, far away

friends of mine,  without tears, women with cruel faces:

midnight has arrived and a gong of death

beats around me like the sea.

There is a taste in the mouth the salt of the sleeper.”

In the lengthy poem, stanza by stanza, the dreams, from subjective, open into an objective expanse. The reader ponders whether the poem points to the struggles and stresses of modern life where wantonly or involuntarily one person negatively impacts another.

 

The concluding stanza highlights dreams knock the doors of scores of poor, side-lined, ignored and oppressed men and women the same way as it does on that of the better off:

 

“My heart, it is late and without shores,

Day, like a poor table cloth put to dry,  

sways, surrounded by beings and extent:

there is something from every living being in the atmosphere:

close inspection of the air would disclose beggars,

lawyers, bandits, mailmen, seamstresses,

and a little of each occupation, a humbled remnant,

wants to perform its own work, within us.

I have been searching for a long time, I examine in all modesty,

overcome, without doubt, by evening.”

 

 

 

 

-To be continued….