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Poem Details
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| Title: | Acceptance of the Prize: Pablo Neruda and Gabriela Mistral |
| Author: | Carol Dietrich |
| Date Submitted: | 6/9/2006 |
| Poem: |
How awkward Sweden must have seemed— Its stage shadowed by the one Whose actions had followed him To make public what they had known In Temuco when their eyes met: He, a boy, and she, not yet to be: Each taught the other to make sense from tears. Habra cielos dulces—sweet skies will shine— She prophesied, and he half heard and half believed The love of his first sight; The moment, then as now, sent him reeling Back to his home where he felt most content To let Mis ojos blink a being into print. He thirsted as he read between the lines. Stockholm could not sustain her sound; Her voice moved brightly in his mind: Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. She, too, feared the haunting thunder of the rails, the rattle in an empty chest. Her postcard, faint with perfume, carried a man to a self-inflicted tomb. The life they loved to hold was gone forever. For once he lost the truth of what he felt And sweet reason passed into parentheses: (Dios quiere callar.) She said these words Askance with ease, as if to restore him To the place where she had been And kneeling, then, before the foreign crowd They honored silently their Lord. ... |