Sweetness, Always

--Pablo Neruda (trans. Alistair Reid)

Why such harsh machinery?

Why, to write down the stuff

and people of every day,

must poems be dressed up in gold,

in old and fearful stone?

I want verses of felt or feather

which scarcely weigh, mild verses

with the intimacy of beds

where people have loved and dreamed.

I want poems stained

by hands and every dayness.

Verses of pastry which melt

into milk and sugar in the mouth,

air and water to drink,

the bites and kisses of love.

I long for eatable sonnets,

poems of honey and flour.

Vanity keeps prodding us

to lift ourselves skyward

or to make deep and useless

tunnels underground.

So we forget the joyous

love-needs of our bodies.

We forget about pastries.

We are not feeding the world.

In Madras a long time since,

I saw a sugary pyramid,

a tower of confectionery —

one level after another,

and in the construction,rubies,

and other blushing delights,

medieval and yellow.

Someone dirtied his hands

to cook up so much sweetness.

Brother poets from here

and there, from earth and sky,

from Medellin, from Veracruz,

Abyssinia, Antofagasta,

do you know the recipe for honeycombs?

Let’s forget about all that stone.

Let your poetry fill up

the equinoctial pastry shop

our mouths long to devour —

all the children’s mouths

and the poor adults’ also.

Don’t go on without seeing,

relishing, understanding

all these hearts of sugar.

Don’t be afraid of sweetness.

With us or without us,

sweetness will go on living

and is infinitely alive,

forever being revived,

for it’s in a man’s mouth,

whether he’s eating or singing,

that sweetness has its place.

[via Paris Rvw Daily Poem]