Erica Jong - To Pablo Neruda lyrics

Again & again I have read your books without ever wishing to know you. I s** the alphabet of blood. I chew the iron filings of your words. I kiss your images like moist mouths while the black seeds of your syllables fly, fly, fly into my lungs. Untranslated, untranslatable, you are rooted inside me- not you-but the you of your poems: the man of his word, the lover who digs into the alien soil of one North American woman & plants a baby- love-child of Whitman crossed with the Spanish language, embryo, sapling, half-breed of my tongue. I saw you once- your flesh- at Columbia. My alma mater & you the visiting soul. Buddha-like you sat before a Buddha; & the audience craned its neck to take you in. Freak show- visiting poet. You sat clothed in your thick imperious flesh. I wanted to comfort you & not to stare. Our words knew each other. That was enough. Now you are dead of fascism & cancer- your books scattered, the oil cruet on the floor. The sea surges through your house at Isla Negra, & the jackboots walk on water. Poet of cats & grapefruits, of elephant saints; poet of broken dishes & Machu Picchu; poet of panthers & pantheresses; poet of lemons, poet of lemony light. The flies swarm thicker than print on a page, & poetry blackens like overripe bananas. The fascists you hated, the communists you loved, obscure the light, the lemons with their buzzing. We were together on the side of light. We walked together though we never met. The eyes are not political, nor the tastebuds, & the flesh tastes salty always like the sea; & the sea turns back the flies.