Pablo Neruda was removed from his post as Chilean consul in Madrid during the Spanish Civil War. The poet was learning his communism through opposition to General Franco, who was turning Spain more and more toward fascism. In his poem “I Explain Some Things,” Neruda writes of the destruction of the war in Madrid:
You will ask: And where are the lilacs?
And the metaphysics laced with poppies?
And the rain that often beat
his words filling them
with holes and birds?
I’ll tell you everything that’s happening with me.
I lived in a neighborhood
of Madrid, with church bells,
with clocks, with trees.
From there you could see
the dry face of Castilla
like an ocean of leather.
My house was called
the house of flowers, because everywhere
geraniums were exploding: it was
a beautiful house
with dogs and little kids.
Raúl, do you remember?
Do you remember, Rafael?
Frederico, you remember,
from under the earth,
do you remember my house with balconies on which
the light of June drowned flowers in your mouth?
Hermano, hermano!
Everything
was great voices, salty goods,
piles of throbbing bread,
markets of my Argüelles neighborhood with its statue
like a pale inkwell among the carp:
oil flowed into the spoons,
a loud pulse
of feet and hands filled the streets,
meters, liters, sharp
essence of life,
piled fish,
texture of rooftops under a cold sun that
wears out the weathervane,
fine delirious ivory of the potatoes,
tomatoes repeating all the way to the sea.
And one morning everything was burning
and one morning the fires
were shooting out of the earth
devouring beings,
and ever since then fire,
gunpowder ever since,
and ever since then blood.
Bandits with airplanes and with Moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
bandits with black friars making blessings,
kept coming from the sky to kill children,
and through the streets the blood of the children
ran simply, like children’s blood.
Jackals the jackal would reject,
stones the dry thistle would bite then spit out,
vipers the vipers would despise!
Facing you I have seen the blood
of Spain rise up
to drown you in one single wave
of pride and knives!
Traitor
generals:
behold my dead house,
behold Spain destroyed:
yet instead of flowers, from every dead house
burning metal flows,
yet from every hollow of Spain
Spain flows,
yet from every dead child rises a rifle with eyes,
yet from every crime bullets are born
that one day will find the target
of your heart.
You will ask why his poetry
doesn’t speak to us of dreams, of the leaves,
of the great volcanoes of his native land?
Come and see the blood in the streets,
come and see
the blood in the streets,
come and see the blood
in the streets!
(taken from The Essential Neruda, pp 63-67, and translated by Mark Eisner)
The Honeysword 