Pablo Neruda: Some Beasts

It was early twilight of the iguana.

From his rainbow-crested ridging
his tongue sank like a dart
into the mulch,
the monastic ant-heap was melodiously
teeming in the undergrowth,
the guanaco, rarefied as oxygen
up among the cloud-plains,
wore gold-flecked boots,
while the llama opened candid
wide eyes in the delicacy
of a world filled with dew.
The monkeys wove a thread
interminably erotic
along the banks of dawn,
demolishing walls of pollen
and flushing the violet flight
of the butterflies from Buga.
It was night of the alligators,
pure and pullulating night
of snouts above the ooze
and from over the sleep-drenched bogs
a dull sound of armour
fell back upon the original earth.

The jaguar touches the leaves
with his phosphorescent absence,
the puma runs on the foliage
like all-consuming flame
and in him burn
the alcoholic eyes of the jungle.
The badgers scratch the river's
feet, scenting out the nest
whose throbbing delight
they'll assail red-toothed.

And in the deeps of great water
the giant anaconda lies
like the circle of the earth,
covered in ritual mud,
devouring and religious.


From Canto general (1950); translated by Anthony Kerrigan. Neruda seems to have gone out of fashion, at least relative to the height of his fame (or hype) in the 1970s. And he was guilty of a lot of poetastry once he became well-known. This piece seems half poem, half windiness: some lines really sing ("The jaguar touches the leaves / with his phosphorescent absence") but others feel empty and documentary. The English requires a freer version to make it work.