Poetic arts (I)

As poet carpenter

I seek out first the wood

rough or smooth, predisposed:

with my hands I touch the odor,

sniff the color, pass my fingers

over the odorous integrity,

over the silence of the system,

until I go to sleep or transmigrate

or strip bare and submerge

into the health of the wood:

into its curcumvallations.

The second thing I do is cut

with a crackling saw

the plank newly chosen:

from the plank spring my verses

like emancipated splinters,

fragrant, strong and distant

so that now my poem

has decks, hull, careen,

rises up beside the road,

is indwelt by the sea.

As poet baker

I prepare the fire, the flour,

the yeast, the heart,

and get involved to the elbows

kneading the light of the oven,

the green water of idiom,

so that the bread that comes after

is sold in the bakery.

I am and don’t know if they know it

mayhap blacksmith by destiny

or at least I was conducive

to all and to my

metallurgical poetry.

In such open patronage

I had no ardent adhesions:

was a solitary ironmonger.

Searching broken horseshoes

I was translated with my debris

to another region without inhabitants,

cleared up by the wind.

There I encountered new metals

that were converted into words.

I understand that my experiments

with manual metaphysics

do not serve poetry,

but I have left off my nails

going at my labors

and these are the poor recipes

I learned with my own hands:

if you find that they are useless

to practice poetry

I’m at once in accord:

I smile toward the future

and withdraw beforehand.

Pablo Neruda