Today is the anniversary of Pablo Neruda’s birthday. He is most famous for his love poems but for me he was first and foremost an outstanding symbolist. It is astonishing how many great poets and writers were born under the sign of Cancer. I am working on a post about Kafka (born 3 July), who I worship obsessively, but Neruda has oftentimes given me a sense of rapture, especially if I realize they were originally written in Spanish, which to my ears is the most beautiful sounding language in the world (En el amor, como agua del mar te has desatado… – In love, you have loosened yourself like seawater). I appreciate also that his verses are so full of life and very earthy, fleshy and sensual. This is actually why I wanted to learn Spanish and tried it diligently for a few years, but sadly now a lot has been lost.
I have chosen some of his more beautiful verses:
Love is the mystery of water and the star.
…so I wait for you like a lonely house
till you will see me again and live in me.
Till then my windows ache.
Give me silence, water, hope
Give me struggle, iron, volcanoes.
Everything is ceremony in the wild garden of childhood.
Jozef Mehoffer, Strange Garden (a great Polish painter)
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.
So it does indeed.
symbolreader 
Your posts always seem to weave my random thoughts seamlessly together, filling the gaps & creating a magnificent cohesive tapestry within my mind. I’m in great admiration of your gift. Thank you for sharing!
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Really? I am so honoured. I do not see this post as particularly cohesive but I just felt something strongly and posted without much deliberation.
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Lovely post and I want to live in the Strange garden. Is it me or has your venus return awakened something in your heart? I feel about French the way you do about Spanish and this moon in Gem cannot retain language and grammar despite countless years of French. One of my favorite poets is a Gemini – Bob Dylan, but it works that poetry lives with the moon and neptune.
Au revoir or adios, Linda
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Maybe not only Venus return but also the Grand Water Trine have been stirring me. You are so perceptive. My problem with languages is that I prefer writing to speaking, I can always understand everything but I feel paralyzed when I have to say something. It took me years to muster the courage to communicate in English.
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I am glad you can or we would never have been able to communicate! It is possible that reading and writing a language are separate competencies than pronunciation.that people possess at different levels. I was always a fast reader in grade school but not great at retention. oh well, u are gifted in many areas Monika so don’t let it bother you.
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With Mercury retro we do have different ways of learning. Thank you for your validation.
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Thanks. You reminded me I need to read more Neruda 😉
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And you reminded me of Rimbaud today. 🙂 (I looked at one of your old posts)
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Ahh, Rimbaud. He was a favorite of Jim Morrison and of Patti Smith.
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Dew to the pasture indeed.
Thanks for making me eager to read more of him.
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One of the best:
The Queen
I have named you queen.
There are taller than you, taller.
There are purer than you, purer.
There are lovelier than you, lovelier.
But you are the queen.
When you go through the streets
No one recognizes you.
No one sees your crystal crown, no one looks
At the carpet of red gold
That you tread as you pass,
The nonexistent carpet.
And when you appear
All the rivers sound
In my body, bells
Shake the sky,
And a hymn fills the world.
Only you and I,
Only you and I, my love,
Listen to me.
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Yes beautiful.
She has to be convinced he thinks
But he’s not so sure too about his succes.
Thanks for this nightly present.
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