Neruda
O you marvelous maker of music
whose succulent Spanish celebrated all
the ten thousand thousand things
of our timeworn world when you wrote
open-hearted odes: knowing
songs on such small and strange objects
as piscine scissors, soft woolly socks,
y perro y gato, plato y pan.
Neruda, you never knew a thing
you didn’t like. Dutiful diviner of
unsettled sorrow shaped as a guitar.
Childlike, you charmed us, cataloging
joy in this or that thingamajig; ever
weighing our wants finding them wanting.
O wooer of wonder what should we do?
Teach us, the terrible materialists
to answer life’s appetites with awe.
For nothing is simply nominal. No,
a cache of love is kept in common things.
Originally published in Chautauqua Literary Review
