Poetry By Pablo Neruda || Ep. 26: The Grounded Sleep Podcast

Welcome to the Grounded Sleep Podcast! You don't have to do anything except get into bed, close your eyes, and allow David to guide you into a deep, peaceful rest. Enjoy letting go of the day, quieting all the mental noise, and going back to that primordial place of stillness that is calling you back.

Transcript

Hey there,

My evening friend.

Let me guess,

You need some help getting to sleep again.

Well,

No worries.

I've got something that's definitely going to put you to sleep tonight.

I'm going to do a little poetry reading from one of my favorite poets,

Pablo Neruda.

He actually won the Nobel Prize and his poetry was written in Spanish,

Translated into English.

And I will read it in English because my Spanish is not that good.

So I hope you're done with your evening ritual and you're in bed and the lights are off.

It's nice and dark,

Quiet,

Maybe a little cool.

And you're ready to let go of the day and have a really deep rest.

So I invite you to be on your back.

Be nice and relaxed.

Be super comfortable.

And why not go to sleep with a bit of a smile on your face?

Put a light smile on your face.

Ease up any tension in your shoulders.

Feel the weight of gravity pulling you into your bed.

Close your eyes and allow yourself to drift off as I bore you to sleep with some poetry.

And this poem is called Entrance to the Wood.

Scarcely with my reason,

With my fingers,

With slow waters,

Slow inundated,

I fall into the realm of the forgot-me-nots,

Into a tenacious atmosphere of mourning,

Into a forgotten decaying room,

Into a cluster of bitter clover.

I fall into the shadow amid destroyed things,

And I look at spiders and I graze on thickets of secret inconclusive woods,

And I walk among the moist fibers torn from the living being of substance and silence.

All matter,

Oh rows of dry wings,

In my collapse I climb upon your petals,

My feet heavy with red fatigue.

And in your harsh cathedral I kneel,

Beating my lips with an angle.

I am the one facing your worldly color,

Facing your pale,

Dead swords,

Facing your united hearts,

Facing your silent multitude.

I am the one facing your wave of dying fragrances,

Wrapped in autumn and resistance.

I am the one undertaking a funeral voyage among your yellow scars.

I am the one with your sourceless laments,

Foodless,

Abandoned,

Alone,

Entering darkened corridors,

Reaching your mysterious substance.

I see your dry currents move,

I see interrupted hands grow,

I hear your oceanic vegetation,

Rustle shaken by night and fury,

And I feel leaves dying inward,

Joining green substances to your forsaken immobility.

Pores,

Veins,

Circles of sweetness,

Weight,

Silent temperature,

Arrows piercing your fallen soul,

Powder of sweet consumed pulp,

Ashes filled with extinguished souls,

Come to me,

To my measureless dream,

Fall into my bedroom where night falls and endlessly falls like broken water,

And bind me to your life and to your death and to your docile substances,

To your dead neutral doves,

And let us make fire and silence and sound,

And let us burn and be silent and bells.

And this next poem is called Ordinance of Wine.

When to regions,

When to sacrifices,

Deep purple stains fall like rains,

Wine opens the door amazed,

And into the shelter of the month's flies,

Its body of soaked red wings,

Its feet touch the walls and the tiles,

With the dampness of drowned tongues,

And upon the edge of the naked day,

Its bees go falling in drops.

I know the wine does not flee shouting at the coming of winter or hide in gloomy churches to seek fire in crumbled rags.

Rather it flies above the season,

Above the winter that has now arrived,

With a dagger between its hard eyebrows.

I see vague dreams I recognize far away,

And I see in front of me behind the window panes meeting of unhappy clothes.

They are not reached by the wine bullet,

Its effect of poppy,

Its red ray,

Dye smothered in sad textures,

And it spills along the lone canals,

Along moist streets,

Along nameless rivers,

The bitterly submerged wine,

The blind and subterranean and solitary wine.

I stand in its foam and its roots.

I weep on its foliage and its dead,

Accompanied by Taylor's fallen.

In the midst of dishonored winter,

I climb ladders of moisture and blood,

Groping along the walls,

And in the anguish of the coming time I kneel upon a stone and weep.

And toward acrid tunnels I make my way,

Dressed in transitory metals,

Toward solitary wine vaults,

Toward dreams,

Toward green palpitating shoe polish,

Toward disinterested tools,

Toward tastes of mud and throat,

Toward imperishable butterflies.

Then the wine men rise up,

Wearing deep purple belts and hats of defeated bees,

And they bring goblets filled with dead eyes and terrible swords of brine,

And with raucous horns they greet one another,

Singing songs of nuptial intent.

I like the raucous songs of the wine men,

And the noise of wet coins on the table,

And the smell of shoes and grapes,

And of green.

I like the blind singing of the men,

And that sound of salt striking the walls of the dying dawn.

I speak of things that exist.

And forbid that I should invent things when I am singing.

I speak of spit split upon the walls.

I speak of slow stockings.

I speak of chorus of the wine men striking the coffin with a bird bone.

I am in the midst of that singing,

In the midst of the winter that rolls through the streets.

I am in the midst of the drinkers with my eyes open toward forgotten places,

Either remembering in delirious mourning or sleeping tumbled into the ashes.

Spring nights,

Ships,

Seed times,

Departed friends,

Circumstances,

Bitter hospitals and girls ajar,

Remembering a wave slapping a certain rock with an adornment of flour and foam.

In the life that one leaves in certain countries,

On certain solitary coasts,

A sound of stars in the palm trees,

A heartbeat on the window panes,

A train crossing darkly on the cursed wheels,

And many sad things of this sort.

To the moisture of the wine in the mornings,

On the walls of bitten by the winter days,

That fall in wine cellars no doubt solitary.

To that virtue of the wine come struggles and tired metals and deaf dentures.

And there is a tumult of broken objections.

There is a furious weeping of bottles and a crime like a fallen whip.

The wine digs in its black thorns and it walks its lubricious hedgehogs.

It daggers amid midnights amid horse,

The draggled throats amid cigars and twisted hair,

And like a sea wave it swells its voice,

Howling tears in corpse hands.

And then flows the persecuted wine and its tenacious wine bags are smashed against the horseshoes and the wine goes into silence and it casks in wounded ships where the air bites faces crews of silence and the wine flees along highways past churches among the coals.

And its feathers fall and its mouth is disguised in brimstone and the wine burning among the worn out streets seeking wells,

Tunnels,

Ants,

Moths of sad dead men through which to reach the blue of the land in which are mingled rain and the absent ones.

And one more poem.

Among frightening feathers,

Among nights,

Among magnolias,

Among telegrams,

Among the south wind and the maritime west you come flying.

Beneath the tombs,

Beneath the ashes,

Beneath the frozen snails,

Beneath the last terrestrial waters you come flying.

Farther down among the submerged girls and blind plants and broken fish,

Farther down among the clouds again you come flying.

Beyond blood and bones,

Beyond bread,

Beyond wine,

Beyond fire,

You come flying.

Over delegations and drugstores and wheels and lawyers and warships and red teeth recently pulled you come flying.

Over sunken roofed cities where huge women take down their hair with broad hands and lost combs you come flying.

Past the vaults where the wine grows with tepid,

Turbid hands in silence,

With slow red wooden hands you come flying.

Among vanished aviators beside canals and shadows beside buried lilies you come flying.

Among bitter colored bottles,

Among rings and misfortune lifting your hands and weeping you come flying.

Over dentists and congregations,

Over movie houses and tunnels and ears,

With a new suit and extinguished eyes,

You come flying.

Over your walled cemetery where sailors go astray,

While the rain of your death falls,

You come flying.

While the rain of your fingers falls,

While the rain of your bones falls,

While the marrow and your laughter fall,

You come flying.

Over the stones on which you melt,

Running down winter,

Down time,

While your heart descends and drops,

You come flying.

You are not there,

Surrounded by cement and black hearts and notaries and infuriated riders,

You come flying.

Oh sea poppy,

Oh my kinsman,

Oh guitar player dressed in bees,

There can't be so much shadow in your hair,

You come flying.

There can't be so much shadow pursuing you.

There can't be so many dead swallows,

So much dark lamenting land,

You come flying.

The black wind opens its wings of coal and foam to sweep the sky where you pass,

You come flying.

There are ships and a dead sea cold and whistles and months and a smell of rainy morning,

You come flying.

There is rum,

You and I,

And my heart where I weep and nobody and nothing but a staircase of broken steps and an umbrella,

You come flying.

There lies the sea,

I go down at night,

I hear you come flying under the sea without anyone,

Under the sea that dwells in me,

Darkened,

You come flying.

I hear your wings in your slow flight and the water of the dead strikes me like blind wet doves,

You come flying.

You come flying alone,

Solitary,

Alone among the dead,

Forever alone.

You come flying without a shadow and without a name,

Without sugar,

Without a mouth,

Without rose bushes.

You come flying.

You come flying.

You come flying.

You come flying.

Reviews

One of my favorite poets! Thank you 🙏🏼

Fab thank you. The music behind the poetrywas not obtrusive. It might even be little louder so it (or abell/gong) could signify the beginning g & end of each poem; on the page these would be easier to see.

Thank you David 💖💗
Such unusual and unique poems, made so much more delightful being well spoken with your soothing voice.
Namaste, dear soul ☺️💗

Worked a treat!! Thanks 🌻

I love Pablo Neruda and could listen to his work for daaayyyyyssss. Well, in this case it’s until I fall asleep, which is just as good. ❤️

Love Pablo 🌹. A lovely way to spend middle of the night hours...

Simply beautiful. Thank you

Beautiful. So thankful for you!