Here’s an English translation of the poem “Drunk As Drunk” by Pablo Neruda:
Drunk As Drunk
Translated from the Spanish by Christopher Logue
Drunk as drunk on turpentine
From your open kisses,
Your wet body wedged
Between my wet body and the strake
Of our boat that is made of flowers,
Feasted, we guide it – our fingers
Like tallows adorned with yellow metal –
Over the sky’s hot rim,
The day’s last breath in our sails.
Pinned by the sun between solstice
And equinox, drowsy and tangled together
We drifted for months and woke
With the bitter taste of land on our lips,
Eyelids all sticky, and we longed for lime
And the sound of a rope
Lowering a bucket down its well. Then,
We came by night to the Fortunate Isles,
And lay like fish
Under the net of our kisses.
Drunk As Drunk in English
Drunk as drunk on turpentine
From your open kisses,
Your wet body wedged
Between my wet body and the strake
Of our boat that is made of flowers,
Feasted, we guide it—
Our fingers, two cedar birds, pilot it
Across the smooth carpets—
Over the keel’s pool and the sail’s
Purple navel,
Until your watchmen come forward
And the wind, dark as a raisin,
Deepens the petals of the afternoon.
While you wait,
I go to the place where we made love
And eat your apple, bashful beside
The leaves.
Lulled by a phoebe, the vane turning
To the heart of the wind,
I see you as veins of water on earth,
I see you as veins of earth in the water,
And the caverns of foam speak your name.
Oh love, Oh rose boiled
And flame running through
The murmuring tree,
And the fishing man of sand
Who cries through his piercing
Shell, his white or blue cry,
And his long nets
Through the boats of foam.
Drunk as drunk on turpentine,
Oh my love.
And the two of us, in love and strange to ourselves,
Thick to the neck and sleep in the middle of the sea,
love,
Drunk as drunk on turpentine
From your open kisses.
Also read,
And Because Love Battles Poem by Pablo Neruda
Clenched Soul Poem by Pablo Neruda
Share With Your Friends