ODE TO THE TOMATO

The street
is overflowing with tomatoes.
It's noon,
summer,
and the sun
splits
into two halves
of a tomato,
flooding
the street
with juice.
In December
the tomato
breaks loose,
invades kitchens,
overruns lunches;
it sits
on the sideboard
among the glasses,
the butter dishes,
the blue saltshakers.
It possesses
an appropriate light,
a benign majesty.
Unfortunately, we must
assassinate it.
A knife
is plunged deep
into its living pulp,
red
viscera;
it is a
wet sun
inexhaustibly
fulfilling the salads
of Chile,
happily bedding down
with the illustrious onion.
In celebration,
oil,
that essential child
of the olive,
is spilled
upon its half-opened hemispheres.
The pimento's
fragrance,
the magnetism of salt
are added;
the day's marriage
made,
parsley
raises
its green flags,
potatoes
boil vigorously,
and the roast
shouts with its aroma
that's wafting through
the doorway
"It's time!
Let's go!"
And on
the table, belted
by summer,
sits the tomato,
luminary of the earth,
repetitiously fertile star,
showing us
its convolutions,
its canals,
its famed abundant
fullness that is
without pit,
without armor,
having no scales or thorns;
without suspicion or sorrow
it surrenders up to us
the pleasure
of its fiery color,
and the totality
of its spirited freshness.

XXXXXXXXXXXXafter Neruda

ODE TO THE HEMISPHERES

We dream
of a world, and then
we dream of a world
cut in two. Two
hemispheres
composing the globe.
Who will say
the equator
is not there, that
we will not find
a painted line
stretching across land,
across the breadth
of ocean? It is
painted in our minds.
On Pacific boats, whenever,
crossing it,
they throw novices
into the watery blue
where that imagined line
parts the waters, call that action
an initiation.

Two hemispheres.

I stood
on an island, in the
middle of summer, imagining what
she was doing, there,
the
other side of
the line, where
winter was,
the perfect balance of
my days. As I
sweated she froze,
as I made
love she knew
absence, as I lay
in the sand she
put on her heavy
coat and walked
out into
the day. Sometimes we looked up
at the night sky,
saw Orion: I, overhead; she, on
the horizon.

Two hemispheres, two
halves, the cut fruit,
Aristophanes' dream.

original
earth
of wet islands,
by tempestuous Chile,
by the Chilean sea,
an emerald that pours
its green light
out upon the austral ocean.

Potato,
sweet
matter,
almond
of the earth,
the sediment
there
does not possess
dead metals;
there, in the obscure
softness of the islands,
no one fights for
copper and its submerged
volcanoes,
or the blue cruelty
of magnesium.
Hands planted you
in the moist ground
as though stocking a nest.
And when
the thunder
of that evil
war,
the Spanish
conquest,
black as an eagle of the grave,
sought savage gold
in the burning
matrix
of the Araucanias,
its greedy
ones
were exterminated,
its leaders
died,
and when
the poor ruined captains
returned
to stony Castile
in their hands they raised
not a golden goblet
but a potato
from the Chilean sea.

You are honorable
like
hands
that till the soil,
like
a hen
you're a member of the family,
are compact as a cheese
that the earth pours out
from its nourishing
udders;
enemy of hunger,
in all
nations
you've planted
your victorious and ready
banner,
in frozen land or in the ground
of burning coastlines
your anonymous flower
has appeared,
announcing the thick
and steady
birth rate of your roots.

Universal delight,
you don't await
my song,
for you are deaf
and blind
and buried.
Cooked in an inferno
of oil
you scarcely speak,
nor do you sing
in the fried-fish shops
of the harbours;
when close to the guitars
you are silent, potato,
meal of the subterranean
night,
interminable treasure-trove
of the people.

after Neruda

ODE TO BASEBALL

All summer
I'll sit in your bleachers, Baseball,
watching the game, catching some sun.
In an unintellectual season
it is a delight to witness gracefulness,
the pivoting shortstop,
an impossible catch
made up against the centerfield fence.
What the mind turns over
is the slider tailing away,
the believable illusion of the curveball.
Who can deny the game
its psychological and metaphysical reality?
Innings that contract and expand
for no reason found this side of mysticism,
a shutout one day, thirteen runs the next.
And a rulebook that would confound John Locke.
I love the beauty
of the well-computed average, well-placed
statistic, but then I love
the infielder knocking the ball down
and recovering, rifling
a throw to first base
that just beats the runner
by a step, even more.
And then that mix
of normalcy and oddness: pitchers
throwing heat and emory boards,
.300 hitters who look like lizards, fat umpires,
trembling rookies rising to the occasion,
and the perfect game
every fifteen years. There is magic
in every ball that clears the fence, every fancy
defensive play. Baseball,
I would not miss what takes place
between the lines
during one weekend afternoon
for a season's ticket
to the world's creation.

ODE TO LOVE

Love, it's time that we settled accounts;
at my age it isn't possible
to deceive myself or you any longer.
All right, so I was a thief of the roads;
I don't regret it.
I played the balcony scene
every spring beneath a different window,
swore innumerable oaths
by the light of the celestial moon.
All right, but what about
the other side of the balance sheet?
Solitude held me fast
in its net of cold jasmine, and loneliness
prodded me with its pitchfork.
It went on incessantly
until, miraculously,
she arrived in my arms, a fresh wind
blown straight from the islands.
And now, Love,
though I've betrayed you
each and every summer night,
please don't take on the form of the sea
and leave me naked,
solitary, expectant--

instead, behold her:
she who came into my arms like a wave,
who alone has the flavor of sacred fruit,
the ready twinkling of a star,
who burns me like a dove,
in love-making
letting down the long hair of a bonfire.
Since that first night, Love,
everything is so simple.
I obey all orders
given to my once forgetful heart;
I hug her waist
and claim her mouth
with the power of my kisses,
like a king, with desperate army,
capturing a small castle
where he is convinced the wild white lily
of his childhood still grows.
For this, Love,
I believe that I can walk your road.
When again I hear the call of the hunt,
when you've tamed passion,
still you'll be like bread on the table:
simple, basic, what I must have.

Love, I must tell you this:
when, for the first time,
I held her,
it was like embracing rain waters
that have plummeted from a precipice in spring.
Today I acknowledge it.
I contract my hands and feet to you,
the sockets of my eyes,
that they may receive
her treasures: the cascade
of interminable light, the thread of gold,
the bread of her fragrance
that, unaffectedly, Love, fills my life.

after Neruda

ODE TO MY DAUGHTER
XXXXfor Sarah

When you were sick or teething
I would carry you in my arms, walking the floor,
and sing to you remembered lullabyes;
and when they'd all been run through
several times, and still you would not sleep,
I sang lyricless melodies, hummed
anything that seemed soothing, desperate
to find a way to calm you, to carry you down
into the spiralling realm of infant sleep.
And, eventually, it always worked;
I was surprised by how much music
seemed to be a part of you;
I went out and bought you a radio
your cousin soon drowned in the bathtub.

The music you will dance to
won't be written for another ten years, not unless
all the old songs come around again
though I wish you music of your own.
At three and a half
you astound me with your conversation,
your desire to speak.
It was hard for you at first,
and now you are so proud of yourself.

You'll climb the years
one rung at a time, as you now tackle
the monkey bars in the older kids' park,
passionately making your way.
The child I push on the swing now
will one day take to the sky, leaving for Paris perhaps,
going off to discover the world again,
searching out its exotic music.

I will stand breathless for years
watching you change, will try my best
to never embarrass you, never let you down.

Right now you're at the age
where, if anything bothers you,
I know about it immediately;
but when you're older, grown up,
if you're ever feeling lonely, unsure,
or frightened, and need someone to talk to,
need a hand to hold, I'll try
to always be there for you,
will always sing your praises.
There's nothing you can't tell me,
isn't any bad situation
I won't do my best to try to rescue you from.
And if I can't find the words
you need to hear
I'll try to improvise a soothing melody.

The only song I can never sing
is the one that says goodbye to you.