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From
Heights of Macchu Picchu
Entonces
en la escala de la tierra he subido
entre la atroz marana de las selvas peridas
hasta ti, Macchu Picchu.
Alta
ciudad de piedras escalares,
por fin morada del que lo terrestre
no escondio en las dormidas vestiduras.
En ti, como dos lineas paralelas,
la cuna del relampago y del hombre
se mecian en un vientto de espinas.
Then
up the ladder of the earth I climbed
through the barbed jungle's thickets
until I reached you Macchu Picchu.
Tall
city of stepped stone,
home at long last of whatever earth
had never hidden in her sleeping clothes.
In you two lineages that had run parallel
met where the cradle both of man and light
rocked in a wind of thorns.
Pablo Neruda
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Mt.
Iztaccihuatl, often more conveniently called Izta,
is an extinct volcano, the third highest mountain in
Mexico behind Pico de Orizaba (18,405 ft.) and Popocatepetl
(17,887 ft.). Izta and its active neighboring volcano
Popo are situated about ten miles apart. Both mountains
are fewer than fifty miles southeast of Mexico City.
The
name Iztaccihuatl is Náhuatl (Aztec) for White Woman,
a name which has as its origins in an ancient legend
in which Iztaccihuatl and Popcatepetl were once lovers,
but were turned into mountains after displeasing the
gods. Iztaccihuatl was turned into a mountain without
life, and Popcatepetl was given eternal life, a curse
of the highest magnitude in that forever he must gaze
upon the extinct form of his beloved Izta. His anguish
is to blame for the rumblings of the earth.
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Pablo
Neruda (1904-1973), whose real name is Neftalí Ricardo
Reyes Basoalto, was born on 12 July, 1904, in the town
of Parral in Chile. Neruda studied French and pedagogy
at the University of Chile in Santiago. Between
1927 and 1935, the government put him in charge of a
number of honorary consulships, which took him to Burma,
Ceylon, Java, Singapore, Buenos Aires, Barcelona, and
Madrid. His poetic production during that difficult
period included, among other works, the collection of
esoteric surrealistic poems, Residencia en la tierra
(1933), which marked his literary breakthrough. In
1939, Neruda was appointed consul for the Spanish emigration,
residing in Paris, and, shortly afterwards, Consul General
in Mexico, where he rewrote his Canto General de
Chile, transforming it into an epic poem about the
whole South American continent, its nature, its people
and its historical destiny. In
1943, Neruda returned to Chile, and in 1945 he was elected
senator of the Republic, also joining the Communist
Party of Chile. Due to his protests against President
González Videla's repressive policy against striking
miners in 1947, he had to live underground in his own
country for two years until he managed to leave in 1949.
After living in different European countries he returned
home in 1952. Neruda's
production is exceptionally extensive. For example,
his Obras Completas, constantly republished,
comprised 459 pages in 1951; in 1962 the number of pages
was 1,925, and in 1968 it amounted to 3,237, in two
volumes. Among his works of the last few years can be
mentioned Cien sonetos de amor (1959), which
includes poems dedicated to his wife Matilde Urrutia,
Memorial de Isla Negra, a poetic work of an autobiographic
character in five volumes, published on the occasion
of his sixtieth birthday, Arte de pajáros (1966),
La Barcarola (1967), the play Fulgor y muerte
de Joaquín Murieta (1967), Las manos del día
(1968), Fin del mundo (1969), Las piedras
del cielo (1970), and La espada encendida.
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