“Christ Speaks through the Soul of Pablo Neruda,” an Homage in Three Parts by Bob Rich

“Christ Speaks through the Soul of Pablo Neruda,” an Homage in Three Parts by Bob Rich

I.     Yellow as the Sun

 

Alive! My friend, you will not die

If you let your mortal eye

See the light within the light

The beauty within the beauty

The fire inside the fire

The volcanic fire within a single rose

The gentle life-saving music in the toll of a single bell

The compassionate ocean of light behind all things.

 

Come by my side and do not die

Look at the eyes of the one you love

There, at the light inside the eyes

The tender yellow light.

 

The sun is singing and resting in its eternity

Calm in its fierce yellow music

The ocean listens beneath the sun

Waves crash and toil and weep

The mere existence of yellow wets my face with joyful tears.

 

Could you find your way to the shore?

 

II.     White as the Moon

 

Enough! Release yourself from this gray sinking prison

With its cold and silent marble walls

Listen! The sea gull is a not a predator, my friend,

it is a white sea-side dove with an olive branch!

Rise up at this moment from the ice!

Rise up and grasp the branch in the gull’s light-soaked talons

The gull sees you with eyes like flowers in fiery song

Flowers that despise death

Hold the branch to see when you were a child ~~

 

Running with another child

Running fast across the grass

Holding a kite as it smears the sky in a blazing blur of white

Your happy, tear-stained face wiped by the wind as you laugh and run

Your kite like a white, flapping, unchained bird,

leaping and rising in the warm, collaborative wind

It is your long, blissful day of youth,

which slowly arcs forward into the cradle of a night of peaceful sleep,

While, through your childhood window, the moonlight is shining,

with its gentle, white, undetectable hand,

on your slightly rising, slightly falling shoulder while you rest.

 

III.     Blue as the Sea

 

Years later, as an adult, you exit the dreary prison

With a deeper understanding of colored light

Walking toward the sea, you pass a park with fragrant, freshly-cut grass

A whisper carried by the cool breeze greets you at the shore

The ocean had been waiting for you like a loyal companion.

 

“I am life,” says the sea, calling to you

While, out ahead of you, a man and a woman walk together,

hand in hand, along the wet sand

As the sun pours heat like warm golden light from a shining cup

Into the ocean’s stirring, cool waters below.

 

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