Del Norte trajo Almagro se arrugada centella. Y sobre el territorio, entre explosión y ocaso, se inclinó día y noche como sobre una carta. Sombra de espinas, sombra de cardo y cera, el español reunido con su seca figura, mirando las sombrías estrategias del suelo. Noche, nieve y arena hacen la forma de mi delgada patria, todo el silencio está en su larga línea, toda la espuma sale de su barba marina, todo el carbón la llena de misteriosos besos. Como una brasa el oro arde en sus dedos y la plata ilumina como una luna verde su endurecida forma de tétrico planeta. El español sentado junto a la rosa un día, junto al aceite, junto al vino, junto al antiguo cielo no imaginó este punto de colérica piedra nacer bajo el estiércol del águila marina.

Descubriodores de Chile

Pablo Neruda (1904 - 1973)

Almagro brought his wrinkled lightning down from the north, and day and night he bent over this country between gunshots and twilight, as if over a letter. Shadows of thorn, shadow of thistle and of wax, the Spaniard, alone with his dried-up body, watching the shadowy tactics of the soil. My slim nation has a body made up of night, snow, and sand, the silence of the world is in its long coast, the foam of the world rises from its seaboard, the coal of the world fills it with mysterious kisses. Gold burns in its finger like a live coal and silver lights up like a green moon its petrified shadow that’s like a gloomy planet. The Spaniard, sitting one day near a rose, near oil, near wine, near the primitive sky, could not really grasp how this spot of furious stone was born beneath the droppings of the ocean eagle.

Discoverers of Chile Preceeding Page: Cuernos del Paine, Patagonia

Ni puente ni barca me trajo hasta aquí. No me lo contaron por isla o país. Yo no lo buscaba ni lo descubri. Parece una fábula que yo me aprendí, sueño de tomar y de desasir. Y es mi patria donde vivir y morir. Neither bridge nor boat, brought me here. No one told me, it was island or shore. A land I did not search for, and did not discover. Like a fable, that I learned, a dream of taking, and letting go, and it is my land, where I live and die.

Isla de Pasqua/Easter Island

Gabriela Mistral País de la Ausencia Land of Absence

La ola que desprendes, arco de identidad, pluma estrellada, cuando se despeñó fue sólo espuma, y regresó a nacer sin consumirse. Toda tu fuerza vuelve a ser origen. Sólo entregas despojos triturados, cáscaras que apartó tu cargamento, lo que expulsó la acción de tu abundancia, todo lo que dejó de ser racimo.

The wave that you release - arch of identity, starry plume when it broke it was just form and it rose again without expiring. All your force becomes origin again. You only deliver crushed debris, detritus removed from your cargo, whatever the action of your abundance expelled. everything that ceased to be cluster. Pablo Neruda El Gran Oéano The Great Ocean

Tú me preguntarás si la estatua en que tantas uñas y manos, brazos oscuros fui gastando, te reserva una sílaba del cráter, un aroma antiguo, preservado por un signo de lava? No es así, las estatuas son lo que fuimos, somos nosotros, nuestra frente que miraba las olas, nuestra materia a veces interrumpida, a veces continuada en la piedra semejante a nosotros. Pablo Neruda Los Constructores de Estatuas

Will you ask me if the statue on which I kept Consuming so many fingernails, hands and dark arms reserves a syllable of the crater from you, an acient aroma, preserved by a sign of lava? There is nothing, the statues are what we were, we are, our brow that beheld the waves, our substance, sometimes interrupted, sometimes continued in the stone that resembles us. Pablo Neruda The Statues Builders

Gabriela Mistral El Ángel Guardaián The Guardian Angel Es verdad, no es un cuento; hay un Ángel Guardaián que te toma y te lleva como el viento y con los niños va por donde van.

It is true, it isn’t a story; there is a guardian angel who takes you and carries you like the wind and goes with children wherever children go.

The oldest bull crossed the day. His legs scratched the planet. He continued, travelling to where the sea lives, He reached the shore, the oldest bull. On the edge of time, the ocean, He closed his eyes and grass covered him. He breathed the whole green distance. And silence built the rest. Pablo Neruda The Bull

Las Las criaturas criaturas resbalan resbalan de de soslayo soslayo hacia hacia el el olvido, olvido, yy también también los los dos dos rodamos rodamos hacia hacia la la noche, noche, mi mi niño. niño. All All Creature Creature are are sliding sliding aslant aslant down down toward toward forgetfulness forgetfulness and and asleep. asleep. You You and and I, I, also, also, my my baby baby tumble tumble down down toward toward night’s night’s keep. keep. Gabriela Mistral - Noche Night

Pablo Neruda, Solitudes

Among the stones of the coast, walking, by the shore of Chile, farther off sea and sea, moon and seegrass, the lonely expanse of the planet.

May the same vagabond wave that takes you, return you. May the road not entwine itself about your neck like a serpent.

Gabriela Mistral Farewell to the Traveller

Asomando a la noche en la terraza de un rascacielos altísimo y amargo pude tocar la bóveda nocturna y en un acto de amor extraordinario me apoderé de una celeste estrella. Reaching out at the night on the terrace of a very tall and sullen skyscraper, I could touch the nocturnal canopy and in an art of extraordinary love I grabbed a celestial star. Pablo Neruda Oda a una estrella Ode to a Star

Pero tal vez su follaje ya va arropando mi sueño... Perhaps its foliage already clothes my dream... Gabriela Mistral Último Árbol Final Tree

In the pure night my mourning shaped in the labyrinth of my body, and this night breath enveloped me, this smoke they call mourning that engulfs and blinds me.

Gabriela Mistral, Mourning

Fatherland, summer covers your sweet and tough body. Your mountainous borders are tall and blue like a carbon copy of heaven, and from there snow has departed, galloping with turbulent lips toward the sea. Perhaps, at this very moment, you wear the green tunic I adore; Forest, water and wheat in your waist. Oh marine land, with the sea you move your iridescent universe of sand and oysters. Pablo Neruda, Greetings

¡YO NO TENGO SOLEDAD!

I AM NOT ALONE!

Es la noche desamparo de las sierras hasta el mar. Pero yo, la que te mece, ¡yo no tengo soledad!

The night, it is deserted from the mountains to the sea. But I, the one who rocks you, I am not alone!

Es el cielo desamparo si la Luna cae al mar. Pero yo, la que te estrecha, ¡yo no tengo soledad!

The sky, it is deserted for the moon falls to the sea. But I, the one who holds you, I am not alone!

Es el mundo desamparo y la carne triste va. Pero yo, la que te oprime, ¡yo no tengo soledad!

The world, it is deserted. All flesh is sad you see. But I, the one who hugs you, I am not alone!

Gabriela Mistral (1889 - 1957)