About Jodey Bateman Pablo Neruda Translations by Jodey Bateman Contributors Abuela Musica Jalapeno Peppers Children’s Page Finder Submissions

Status Report | Poem by Pablo Neruda

 
Status Report
 
 

It was nice of you to call, it's nice to hear

your voice. How are you ? You are

much better now.  I've seen the work you published

in the magazine. Yes, more than a few years had passed since:

and it shows, there are few offsprings,

he didn't say how many. One should not

count. So, how am I ? The same walls and

hundred & twenty square feet:  the ground always

around me and everything cracks. I tremble

at nights: sudden breaks,  the plaster

peels off,  up on the roof bats spit

showers of fruit mash softened by puke and grains. And if I

attend to this silence coming from

your phone, I can clearly hear:

herds of longings fading away, galloping towards the mountains.
 

- Elisha Porat
 
 

translated from Hebrew by Yuval Perez
(c) Elisha Porat April  2000
 

to Elisha      to Moongate



Other Jodey Bateman translations of Pablo Neruda:
I'll Explain Some Things
Soneto LXXIII
What Spain Was Like
An Ode For Ironing
Beasts
Ode to a Woman Gardening
Ode To Bird Watching
Ode to Broken Things
Ode to Clothing / Oda al Traje
Ode to Olive Oil / Oda al Aceite
Ode to Some Yellow Flowers
Ode to the Artichoke
Ode to the Dictionary
Ode to the Lemon
Ode to the Piano
Ode to the Smell of Wood
Opium In The East (excerpt)
Poem Twenty
GAUTAMA CHRIST
For Everybody
From the Heights of Maccho Picchu
Poems by Pablo Neruda, Pulitizer Prize winner
Statues
Status Report
The Arrival in Madrid
The Heavenly Poets
The Old Women of the Ocean
The Turtle
To Sit Down
To the Foot From Its Child
Triangles