As if I needed another reason to love him madly, I stumbled upon this treasure today...
ODE TO BEES
by Pablo Neruda
Multitude of
bees!
In and out
of the crimson, the blue, the yellow,
of the
softest softness in the world;
you tumble
headlong into a corolla to conduct your business,
and emerge
wearing a golden suit
and quantities
of yellow boots.
The waist,
perfect,
the abdomen striped with dark bars,
the tiny,
ever-busy head,
the wings,
newly made of water;
you enter
every sweet-scented window,
open silken
doors,
penetrate the
bridal chamber of the most fragrant love,
discover a
drop of diamond dew,
and from
every house you visit you remove honey,
mysterious,
rich and
heavy honey, thick aroma,
liquid,
guttering light,
until you
return to your communal palace
and on its gothic parapets
deposit the
product of flower and flight,
the seraphic
and secret nuptial sun!
Multitude of
bees!
Sacred
elevation of unity,
seething schoolhouse.
Buzzing,
noisy workers process the nectar,
swiftly exchanging
drops of ambrosia;
it is summer
siesta in the green solitudes of Osorno.
High above, the
sun casts its spears into the snow,
volcanoes
glisten,
land stretches
endless as the sea,
space is
blue,
but something trembles,
it is the
fiery heart of summer,
the honeyed
heart multiplied,
the buzzing
bee,
the crackling
honeycomb of flight and gold!
Bees,
purest laborers,
ogival workers,
fine,
flashing proletariat,
perfect,
daring militia
that in
combat attack with suicidal sting;
buzz,
buzz above
the earth’s endowments,
family of
gold, multitude of the wind,
shake the
fire from the flowers,
thirst from
the stamens,
the sharp,
aromatic thread
that stitches together the days,
and propagate
honey,
passing over
humid continents,
the most
distant islands of the western sky.
Yes:
let the wax
erect green statues,
let honey
spill in infinite tongues,
let the
ocean be a beehive,
the earth
tower and tunic of flowers,
and the
world a waterfall, a comet’s tail,
a never-ending
wealth of honeycombs!
- Margaret Sayers Peden translation
