Dec 05 2025
Pablo Neruda – The Poet’s Obligation
The Poet’s Obligation
by Pablo Neruda
English version by Alistair Reed
To whoever is not listening to the sea
this Friday morning, to whoever is cooped up
in house or office, factory or woman
or street or mine or harsh prison cell:
to him I come, and, without speaking or looking,
I arrive and open the door of his prison,
and a vibration starts up, vague and insistent,
a great fragment of thunder sets in motion
the rumble of the planet and the foam,
the raucous rivers of the ocean flood,
the star vibrates swiftly in its corona,
and the sea is beating, dying and continuing.
So, drawn on by my destiny,
I ceaselessly must listen to and keep
the sea’s lamenting in my awareness,
I must feel the crash of the hard water
and gather it up in a perpetual cup
so that, wherever those in prison may be,
wherever they suffer the autumn’s castigation,
I may be there with an errant wave,
I may move, passing through windows,
and hearing me, eyes will glance upward
saying, “How can I reach the sea?”
And I shall broadcast, saying nothing,
the starry echoes of the wave,
a breaking up of foam and of quicksand,
a rustling of salt withdrawing,
the grey cry of sea-birds on the coast.
So, through me, freedom and the sea
will make their answer to the shuttered heart.
— from On the Blue Shore of Silence: Poems of the Sea, by Pablo Neruda / Translated by Alastair Reid
/ Image by Nina Stawski /
The poet is telling us that it is time for a prison break!
Neruda is reminding us that poetry is an act of rebellion. The most binding chains are the hidden ones we forge ourselves. Poetry frees the mind and the heart. Poetry — and, by extension, all art — is a revolutionary act, a declaration of psychic freedom. More than a declaration, it is a remembrance, a recollection of the wider, untamed life that awaits us.
All freedoms we strive for in the troubled world around us must first be imagined and felt. Through poetry and art, we shift and reawaken. That is the real freedom regardless of outer circumstance. When enough people carry within themselves that inner freedom, how can it be stopped in the world?
So, through me, freedom and the sea
will make their answer to the shuttered heart.
Recommended Books: Pablo Neruda
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| The Book of Questions | Neruda: Selected Poems | On the Blue Shore of Silence: Poems of the Sea | Pablo Neruda: Selected Poems | Extravagaria: A Bilingual Edition |
| More Books >> | ||||
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Pablo Neruda
Chile (1904 – 1973) Timeline |
Thanks
Thank you, thank you for this thoughtful, wonderful poetry!! I love it.