This is a current draft of my mission statement for my wine project in Mendoza:
AlTo RosSo is a personal wine project named to honor the memory of my late brother, Alberto Tomás Rodríguez Sobrino--
Alberto was an alcoholic who died in the late hours of May 21st, 2005, after being fatally shot in a confrontation with three officers of the Brevard Co. sheriff's office in Orlando, Florida.
Contradictory statements on the part of involved parties point to ambiguous circumstances which have never been fully explained.
AlTo RosSo proposes to make & market the wines that, in a better world, I would have wanted to share with my brother: subtle but deep natural wines, made to be part of a meal.
AlTo RosSo will dedicate all earnings, (apart from the strictest, minimal covering of costs) to a fund dedicated to a dual purpose: proactively, it will seek to match existing monies for the more effective training of law enforcement officers in non-lethal crisis management.
It also expects to be able to contribute in part to defray legal costs in cases where the use of lethal force is deemed egregious & excessive enough to warrant independent investigation of the exculpatory verdict of 'Justifiable Homicide'.
Funny, ha-ha, I'm still struggling with the Spanish version. It's a priority, as Hans Devloo agreed
to retail some of the Merlot I contracted at his B&B, Posada Cavieres, & I need to have a skeleton site with the brand registered as a domain name so he can print the URL on his labels.
Oh, & register as a not-for-profit whenever I get a break from medical testing in Puerto Rico.
5.5.09
Lisboa, what's been going on--
Big mistake to assume Princess Cruises would have some kind of robust wireless broadband on their ships. Could never connect to Skype on their wi-fi service.
My GI tract troubles exploded into crisis a couple of days after my arrival in Mendoza-- as if my mild irritable bowel syndrome had gone ballistic, waking me up middle of the night with anxiety near panic, colics & diarrhoea.
Was stupid & too casual about following some natural medicine prescriptions, got a little better, a little worse, in the end better enough again to let myself get talked into not cancelling my Transatlantic cruise, as I was ready to do.
Managed the nine days at sea on a strict diet & one glass of wine with my meals. (OK, OK, & Fernet-Branca well-diluted in seltzer after dinner)
It was good to digest some food & take solid craps after three weeks of having nearly everything flush out of me only minimally processed!
It also helped in no small way there was a Chinese traditional medicine practitioner on board with an accurate & attentive touch for acupuncture therapy. Thank you, Tamara!
...Then I took a chance on some quiche here at Hotel Ibis-- something like a Euro-MacHotel chain for business meetings-- & my near-permanent intercostal back spasm is screaming-squeezing heart-pumping hard.
This actually gives me hope my friend Leandro & Dr. Whatsis in Maipú are right & it's gallbladder trouble, rather than the worst of my anxiety-fueled fears, which focus on pancreatic trouble-- although my gallbladder showed up plain & clean in a dinky little sonogram I had done.
Sleeping on Argentino NSAID Oxadisten, aspirin, & Valerian root. I guess I'll fly home when I start running out. Hoping against hope I can find the energy & painkillers to make it to Slow Vitis in Barcelona this weekend. Hope dies last.
My GI tract troubles exploded into crisis a couple of days after my arrival in Mendoza-- as if my mild irritable bowel syndrome had gone ballistic, waking me up middle of the night with anxiety near panic, colics & diarrhoea.
Was stupid & too casual about following some natural medicine prescriptions, got a little better, a little worse, in the end better enough again to let myself get talked into not cancelling my Transatlantic cruise, as I was ready to do.
Managed the nine days at sea on a strict diet & one glass of wine with my meals. (OK, OK, & Fernet-Branca well-diluted in seltzer after dinner)
It was good to digest some food & take solid craps after three weeks of having nearly everything flush out of me only minimally processed!
It also helped in no small way there was a Chinese traditional medicine practitioner on board with an accurate & attentive touch for acupuncture therapy. Thank you, Tamara!
...Then I took a chance on some quiche here at Hotel Ibis-- something like a Euro-MacHotel chain for business meetings-- & my near-permanent intercostal back spasm is screaming-squeezing heart-pumping hard.
This actually gives me hope my friend Leandro & Dr. Whatsis in Maipú are right & it's gallbladder trouble, rather than the worst of my anxiety-fueled fears, which focus on pancreatic trouble-- although my gallbladder showed up plain & clean in a dinky little sonogram I had done.
Sleeping on Argentino NSAID Oxadisten, aspirin, & Valerian root. I guess I'll fly home when I start running out. Hoping against hope I can find the energy & painkillers to make it to Slow Vitis in Barcelona this weekend. Hope dies last.
8.4.09
Terminal Pródigo
---
buscar la cura tal vez
perdido el estricto norte
puede aún dar con salud
como halla justa palabra
la coincidental etiqueta
de mercader o poeta
si es el hombre lo que hace
¿desconocerá por ajeno
al que otra cosa ejecuta?
cada respuesta es añico
sin medida para armar
crucigramas de respuesta
queda el papelón quizás
de un obligado libreto
a duras penas sentido
(la más clara voluntad
-- error o facilidad--
ejerce resistencia pura)
---
buscar la cura tal vez
perdido el estricto norte
puede aún dar con salud
como halla justa palabra
la coincidental etiqueta
de mercader o poeta
si es el hombre lo que hace
¿desconocerá por ajeno
al que otra cosa ejecuta?
cada respuesta es añico
sin medida para armar
crucigramas de respuesta
queda el papelón quizás
de un obligado libreto
a duras penas sentido
(la más clara voluntad
-- error o facilidad--
ejerce resistencia pura)
---
27.3.09
17.1.09
Slow Writing: Winey Wanderlust Conflicts
---
Das Wort, von dem du Abschied nahmst, heisst dich am Tor wilkommen,
und was dich hat hier gestreift hat, Halm und Herz und Blume,
ist längst dor Gast und streift dich nimmermehr.
Paul Celan, Die Feste Burg
...You see, I will unhesitatingly-- shamelessly!-- admit I'm the wrong man for the job. Perfectionist & detail oriented, it takes me too long to figure out what I feel, think, or truly care about under a given set of circumstances-- much longer still to manage passably coherent statements about whatever does eventually-- or suddenly, surprisingly, ganz plötzlich!-- arouse my passion--
So I pad my damp trench with books, papers, & souvenirs to pace in muffled shadow & hold the fort for sudden death, crouching down to restlessly nap in the leaky, crumbling modernist nightmare my Mama Pajama's dream house became on Dr.Dad's strict budget: thirty-five thousand 1971 dollars, with endless interest paid over & over by the heart's flowering stalk.
I toast recent losses & save the empty bottles after taking the occasional tasting note.
Among significant deaths around the year's Winter turn-- Harold Pinter, Bettie Page, local expat restaurateur Joe Rao & producer, actor, media entrepreneur Tommy Muñiz, -- I am most recently & personally in mourning these days for Daniel Nagrin, an insufficiently recognised force of American dance. He was one of the inspirations I was at once too proud & too insecure to become a student of...
Somewhat uncharacteristically, the big impression he made on me was not as a dancer, but with his own adaptation of 'The Fall' by Albert Camus staged as a monologue. I had only recently moved to New York, & it was former high school classmate Héctor Huyke who urged me to go see the piece with him...
It seems Mr. Nagrin died the very day after I went through this:
I spent a sleepless, restless night in cabin 9 at the Riverside Campgound in Big Sur, breathing deep, trying to relax, shutting my eyes against the grey dawn that crept over the steep, burnt-out slopes of the Santa Lucia Range on December 28, Feast of the Holy Innocents. An overhwelming sense of failure washed over me. The suggestion came to mind there was absolutely nothing left for it but to buckle up into my rental & drive off one of the unprotected hairpin turns at speed, drawing a final arc into the darkly glimmering Pacific below. My life had already pretty much fallen off a cliff, why not make a statement of literalizing the emotion? A voice in my head rehearsed the line, 'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished' over & over as I tossed & turned, anxiety building with the pressure to act...
The upshot of it was I'd spent something like my year's expenses (near 10,000 bucks or so, if you must know) on ten weeks knocking about California, achieving absolutely nothing of what I'd set out to do.
(...no inexpensive, uncomplicated way to bring back to Puerto Rico any of the wine I've accumulated through my participation in Crushpad projects or visits to wineries...more worryingly, no ground gained in my search for an importing partner for the 150 plus cases of Argentinian wine I made a handshake deal with Alberto Cecchin on, no label or logo design, nothing, nothing...)
(--à suivre...)
Das Wort, von dem du Abschied nahmst, heisst dich am Tor wilkommen,
und was dich hat hier gestreift hat, Halm und Herz und Blume,
ist längst dor Gast und streift dich nimmermehr.
Paul Celan, Die Feste Burg
...You see, I will unhesitatingly-- shamelessly!-- admit I'm the wrong man for the job. Perfectionist & detail oriented, it takes me too long to figure out what I feel, think, or truly care about under a given set of circumstances-- much longer still to manage passably coherent statements about whatever does eventually-- or suddenly, surprisingly, ganz plötzlich!-- arouse my passion--
So I pad my damp trench with books, papers, & souvenirs to pace in muffled shadow & hold the fort for sudden death, crouching down to restlessly nap in the leaky, crumbling modernist nightmare my Mama Pajama's dream house became on Dr.Dad's strict budget: thirty-five thousand 1971 dollars, with endless interest paid over & over by the heart's flowering stalk.
I toast recent losses & save the empty bottles after taking the occasional tasting note.
Among significant deaths around the year's Winter turn-- Harold Pinter, Bettie Page, local expat restaurateur Joe Rao & producer, actor, media entrepreneur Tommy Muñiz, -- I am most recently & personally in mourning these days for Daniel Nagrin, an insufficiently recognised force of American dance. He was one of the inspirations I was at once too proud & too insecure to become a student of...
Somewhat uncharacteristically, the big impression he made on me was not as a dancer, but with his own adaptation of 'The Fall' by Albert Camus staged as a monologue. I had only recently moved to New York, & it was former high school classmate Héctor Huyke who urged me to go see the piece with him...
It seems Mr. Nagrin died the very day after I went through this:
I spent a sleepless, restless night in cabin 9 at the Riverside Campgound in Big Sur, breathing deep, trying to relax, shutting my eyes against the grey dawn that crept over the steep, burnt-out slopes of the Santa Lucia Range on December 28, Feast of the Holy Innocents. An overhwelming sense of failure washed over me. The suggestion came to mind there was absolutely nothing left for it but to buckle up into my rental & drive off one of the unprotected hairpin turns at speed, drawing a final arc into the darkly glimmering Pacific below. My life had already pretty much fallen off a cliff, why not make a statement of literalizing the emotion? A voice in my head rehearsed the line, 'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished' over & over as I tossed & turned, anxiety building with the pressure to act...
The upshot of it was I'd spent something like my year's expenses (near 10,000 bucks or so, if you must know) on ten weeks knocking about California, achieving absolutely nothing of what I'd set out to do.
(...no inexpensive, uncomplicated way to bring back to Puerto Rico any of the wine I've accumulated through my participation in Crushpad projects or visits to wineries...more worryingly, no ground gained in my search for an importing partner for the 150 plus cases of Argentinian wine I made a handshake deal with Alberto Cecchin on, no label or logo design, nothing, nothing...)
(--à suivre...)
4.1.09
30.12.08
Five Seasons Drop/Single Birth Date
(find or search nowhere else
but weigh to sing
in burdens' measured load of loss)
in desire fulfill
in reversal shared to feed
in harm, & swell the hidden wound
from earliest youth
through failed manhood comforts
pared down to solitude's bare unease
in time's fated settling
(here is each & every thing's mystery
since nothing's there, but gone)
Thresholds 2
while soiled linen soaks
in a pool of spreading sunlight
a blank itch burrows damp
nesting home under my skin
--now why would high-voltage hum
grow louder in the old house's shade?
why would it make me thirsty?
loose clouds roll back in
as a sharp colic cramps my bowels
one storm unspools north
while another winds tight south
my island is the recurrent trough
(--the unframed threshold...?)
where continental systems
collapse in sinking ocean fronts
(Ocean Again)
at the rivermouth's broad
widening flow
the current
brings us to our feet
life's horizon recedes
before each step
in a flooding tide of tears
while we learn
to walk on water
the earth is flat
to each & every nearsighted self
& the far shore
is a cradling cloud
of mirror mist
as we tumble over the edge
in endless, sourcing fall
Extended Swelter Delays
on rough plains of compound interest
our view builds out reasonous error
into nation-forts as far as no event horizon
classical perspective how cultured?
from a distance, the ruling strait-jacket
keeps a world standing at any cost
--the price of narrow life-channels drained
a table in the sun, a desk in the shade
rendering split judgements on casual opinion
(Insatiable)
Th airier deepening of aimless want
makes you more alien, more
of an object
The deeper wanting of airless aim
pushes you just beyond
grasping reach
Who are you?
Anyway?
but weigh to sing
in burdens' measured load of loss)
in desire fulfill
in reversal shared to feed
in harm, & swell the hidden wound
from earliest youth
through failed manhood comforts
pared down to solitude's bare unease
in time's fated settling
(here is each & every thing's mystery
since nothing's there, but gone)
Thresholds 2
while soiled linen soaks
in a pool of spreading sunlight
a blank itch burrows damp
nesting home under my skin
--now why would high-voltage hum
grow louder in the old house's shade?
why would it make me thirsty?
loose clouds roll back in
as a sharp colic cramps my bowels
one storm unspools north
while another winds tight south
my island is the recurrent trough
(--the unframed threshold...?)
where continental systems
collapse in sinking ocean fronts
(Ocean Again)
at the rivermouth's broad
widening flow
the current
brings us to our feet
life's horizon recedes
before each step
in a flooding tide of tears
while we learn
to walk on water
the earth is flat
to each & every nearsighted self
& the far shore
is a cradling cloud
of mirror mist
as we tumble over the edge
in endless, sourcing fall
Extended Swelter Delays
on rough plains of compound interest
our view builds out reasonous error
into nation-forts as far as no event horizon
classical perspective how cultured?
from a distance, the ruling strait-jacket
keeps a world standing at any cost
--the price of narrow life-channels drained
a table in the sun, a desk in the shade
rendering split judgements on casual opinion
(Insatiable)
Th airier deepening of aimless want
makes you more alien, more
of an object
The deeper wanting of airless aim
pushes you just beyond
grasping reach
Who are you?
Anyway?
14.12.08
Further notes on that Carmenère...
(Day 1: Winter Solstice, December 21st)
Weird scenes inside the gold mine: I get back from dinner at NoPa & the TV is on, the window wide open in my room at the Metro Hotel. WTF? I don't remember leaving everything like this. When I boot up, Firefox is primed to install an upgrade & I miss the opportunity to search around for traces of unauthorised use or tampering with my laptop. Am I getting paranoid? Maybe it's the after dinner absinthe effect.
When I check email, I find a heartfelt note from meine neffe, Jens-Holger David, so at nine this drizzly evening in San Francisco, I'm his wake-up call in Wolfenbuettel (birthplace of Jaegermeister!), 0600 Central Europe Time in Niedersachsen-- that's Lower Saxony for the sprache-impaired.
He's supposed to be the bad guy in his marriage's breakup, & of course he's too sleepy to give me his side of the story under the circumstances. We're both sorry I wasn't in Puerto Rico last month when he visited.
(Day 2...)
Restlessly reclusive in my city hotel room-- why can't I get into my rental & drive off? Tired. I guess.
Day 3: I blew it. City Rent-a-Car has their whole fleet booked over Christmas & I couldn't extend my current rental beyond tomorrow. Booked for Friday. Forget Big Sur, or San Juan Bautista: I'll be spending Christmas in my Metro hotel room, for better or worse.
In spite of everything going on these days that leads me to question the ultimate relevance of personal wine evaluations except as mercenary marketing tool, I feel compelled to add some further notes to my dismissively skimpy write-up on the Ventura Carmenère for Wine Blogging Wednesday #52:
'...deep ruby (-- is that 'garnet', though?) color with violet rim, fairly simple but pleasant cherry-cassis in nose & palate...'
First of all, I opened the bottle with dinner at the Metro Kathmandu, where the Indian-Nepalese food was a difficult pairing task...I will have to rummage about to figure what I actually ate that evening. In any case, there seemed to be a fleeting bittersweet, tannic edge developing in the aftertaste just before the wine seemed to 'flatten' about two hours after opening. After recent & varied experiences of 'rebound' in the sensorium of organic wines, however, I figured it might be worth saving the remaining half-bottle.
Sure enough, two days later, Kathmandu manager Roshan agreed with me the wine was surprisingly improved: the body was still medium-light at best, washing a little thinly in the midpalate & coming up short in aftertaste. But there was now soft, well-integrated spice in the nose, with some follow through on the tongue. A dusting of nutmeg on the cherries & blackcurrants, as it were, adding subtle complexity & charm to what had at first seemed a gratingly simple, workmanlike quaffer.
It's Christmas Eve. I don't know where I'm eating or what I'm drinking tonight, but at least I have a warm & cozy manger & some silver in my pocket to afford me alternatives. In this Holiday time, please remember those less fortunate, those who cannot, for whichever reason, participate in or exercise the gift, the awareness & freedom of choice. However possible, share your abundance.
Cheers, Peace, & to all a good night!
Weird scenes inside the gold mine: I get back from dinner at NoPa & the TV is on, the window wide open in my room at the Metro Hotel. WTF? I don't remember leaving everything like this. When I boot up, Firefox is primed to install an upgrade & I miss the opportunity to search around for traces of unauthorised use or tampering with my laptop. Am I getting paranoid? Maybe it's the after dinner absinthe effect.
When I check email, I find a heartfelt note from meine neffe, Jens-Holger David, so at nine this drizzly evening in San Francisco, I'm his wake-up call in Wolfenbuettel (birthplace of Jaegermeister!), 0600 Central Europe Time in Niedersachsen-- that's Lower Saxony for the sprache-impaired.
He's supposed to be the bad guy in his marriage's breakup, & of course he's too sleepy to give me his side of the story under the circumstances. We're both sorry I wasn't in Puerto Rico last month when he visited.
(Day 2...)
Restlessly reclusive in my city hotel room-- why can't I get into my rental & drive off? Tired. I guess.
Day 3: I blew it. City Rent-a-Car has their whole fleet booked over Christmas & I couldn't extend my current rental beyond tomorrow. Booked for Friday. Forget Big Sur, or San Juan Bautista: I'll be spending Christmas in my Metro hotel room, for better or worse.
In spite of everything going on these days that leads me to question the ultimate relevance of personal wine evaluations except as mercenary marketing tool, I feel compelled to add some further notes to my dismissively skimpy write-up on the Ventura Carmenère for Wine Blogging Wednesday #52:
'...deep ruby (-- is that 'garnet', though?) color with violet rim, fairly simple but pleasant cherry-cassis in nose & palate...'
First of all, I opened the bottle with dinner at the Metro Kathmandu, where the Indian-Nepalese food was a difficult pairing task...I will have to rummage about to figure what I actually ate that evening. In any case, there seemed to be a fleeting bittersweet, tannic edge developing in the aftertaste just before the wine seemed to 'flatten' about two hours after opening. After recent & varied experiences of 'rebound' in the sensorium of organic wines, however, I figured it might be worth saving the remaining half-bottle.
Sure enough, two days later, Kathmandu manager Roshan agreed with me the wine was surprisingly improved: the body was still medium-light at best, washing a little thinly in the midpalate & coming up short in aftertaste. But there was now soft, well-integrated spice in the nose, with some follow through on the tongue. A dusting of nutmeg on the cherries & blackcurrants, as it were, adding subtle complexity & charm to what had at first seemed a gratingly simple, workmanlike quaffer.
It's Christmas Eve. I don't know where I'm eating or what I'm drinking tonight, but at least I have a warm & cozy manger & some silver in my pocket to afford me alternatives. In this Holiday time, please remember those less fortunate, those who cannot, for whichever reason, participate in or exercise the gift, the awareness & freedom of choice. However possible, share your abundance.
Cheers, Peace, & to all a good night!
9.12.08
Rolling North again...to drink Tinto Chileno for Wine Blogging Wednesday #52
Late again-- as is my stubbornly vicious wont-- for Wine Blogging Wednesday #52, as the number of installments in the wine blogosphere's Premier Online Tasting Event approaches my chronological age...
I was hoping to round up my buddies Adriano & Mark in Los Angeles-- the San Fernando Valley, to be precise-- along with Art & Wine Predator G. Alley for a group tasting of value reds from Chile, but...people have prior obligations, priorities, schedules & agendas, & I could not clearly propose an amenable date for the gathering.
On top of that, I was shocked, shocked to find that there are more Chileno wine choices-- a couple of them made from organic grapes-- in the Health Haven food store on Divisadero street, in the Western Addition district (-- upscale, gentrified denomination 'NoPa') in San Francisco than there were in Whole Foods' Sherman Oaks store in the San Fernando Valley.
I passed up on a $14 'Nuevo Mundo' Cabernet-Merlot organic Meritage for a chance at a $9.99 value: a 2006 Ventura Carmenère, also from organic grapes. Carmenère has had quite the myesterious odyssey-- I'll let the Wiki entry do the honors & proceed to some quick tasting notes: deep ruby (-- is that 'garnet', though?) color with violet rim, fairly simple but pleasant cherry-cassis in nose & palate. The Valley of Lontué, within the Curicó 'appellation', may not be the best terroir for a natural expression of the grape with some depth. Then again, the variety itself may work best in blends, as is the common wisdom.
December 10th is also the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death, & the date for the annual ceremony honoring the year's winners of the prize that bears his name.
Pablo Neruda won the prize for literature in 1971, the second Chilean writer to earn the award, after Gabriela Mistral, who was honored in 1945. Two poets in a land that has given so many more to the world: Vicente Huidobro, Nicanor Parra, Enrique Lihn, Humberto Díaz Casanueva, Roberto Bolaño...
Here is my own idiosyncratic translation of Neruda's Ode to Wine:
Wine color of day
Wine color of night
Wine with feet of purple
or topaz blood
Wine
starful-struck child
of earth
Wine, smooth
as a sword of gold
soft
as disorderly velvet
snail-curled wine
suspended
loving
maritime
never could fit in one glass
in one song, in one man
choral, gregarious, you are
at the very least mutual.
Sometimes
you feed on mortal memories
on your wave
we ride from grave to grave
quarryman of a frozen sepulchre
we cry
fleeting tears
but
your gorgeous
suit of spring
is different
the heart climbs the branches
the wind moves the day
nothing is left
inside your motionless soul
Wine
moves spring
like a plant, joy grows
walls crumble
& boulders, too--
ravines close up
& the song is born.
Thou jug of wine in the desert
by the scrumptious one I love,
said the old poet
may the claypot of wine
to love's kiss add its own kiss.
My love, suddenly
your hips
are the brimful curve
of the goblet
your breast is the bunch
glint of alcohol your mane
grapes your nipples
pure seal your navel
etched on the vessel of your womb
& your love the cascade
of unquenchable wine
the gleam that falls on my senses
the earthy splendor of life.
Yet not only love
burning kiss
or charred heart
are you, wine of life
but
friendship of all beings, trasparency
choir of discipline
surfeit of flowers.
I love on a table,
in the middle of speech,
the light of a bottle
of intelligent wine.
Let them drink
let them remember in each
drop of gold
or topaz glass
or spoon of purple
how Autumn labored
until wine filled the barrels
& may the dark man learn
in the ritual of his business
to remember the earth & its tasks
to spread the plainsong in fruit.
Here is the original in Spanish, in print & as read by Marcella Leoneli.
¡Salud!
I was hoping to round up my buddies Adriano & Mark in Los Angeles-- the San Fernando Valley, to be precise-- along with Art & Wine Predator G. Alley for a group tasting of value reds from Chile, but...people have prior obligations, priorities, schedules & agendas, & I could not clearly propose an amenable date for the gathering.
On top of that, I was shocked, shocked to find that there are more Chileno wine choices-- a couple of them made from organic grapes-- in the Health Haven food store on Divisadero street, in the Western Addition district (-- upscale, gentrified denomination 'NoPa') in San Francisco than there were in Whole Foods' Sherman Oaks store in the San Fernando Valley.
I passed up on a $14 'Nuevo Mundo' Cabernet-Merlot organic Meritage for a chance at a $9.99 value: a 2006 Ventura Carmenère, also from organic grapes. Carmenère has had quite the myesterious odyssey-- I'll let the Wiki entry do the honors & proceed to some quick tasting notes: deep ruby (-- is that 'garnet', though?) color with violet rim, fairly simple but pleasant cherry-cassis in nose & palate. The Valley of Lontué, within the Curicó 'appellation', may not be the best terroir for a natural expression of the grape with some depth. Then again, the variety itself may work best in blends, as is the common wisdom.
December 10th is also the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death, & the date for the annual ceremony honoring the year's winners of the prize that bears his name.
Pablo Neruda won the prize for literature in 1971, the second Chilean writer to earn the award, after Gabriela Mistral, who was honored in 1945. Two poets in a land that has given so many more to the world: Vicente Huidobro, Nicanor Parra, Enrique Lihn, Humberto Díaz Casanueva, Roberto Bolaño...
Here is my own idiosyncratic translation of Neruda's Ode to Wine:
Wine color of day
Wine color of night
Wine with feet of purple
or topaz blood
Wine
starful-struck child
of earth
Wine, smooth
as a sword of gold
soft
as disorderly velvet
snail-curled wine
suspended
loving
maritime
never could fit in one glass
in one song, in one man
choral, gregarious, you are
at the very least mutual.
Sometimes
you feed on mortal memories
on your wave
we ride from grave to grave
quarryman of a frozen sepulchre
we cry
fleeting tears
but
your gorgeous
suit of spring
is different
the heart climbs the branches
the wind moves the day
nothing is left
inside your motionless soul
Wine
moves spring
like a plant, joy grows
walls crumble
& boulders, too--
ravines close up
& the song is born.
Thou jug of wine in the desert
by the scrumptious one I love,
said the old poet
may the claypot of wine
to love's kiss add its own kiss.
My love, suddenly
your hips
are the brimful curve
of the goblet
your breast is the bunch
glint of alcohol your mane
grapes your nipples
pure seal your navel
etched on the vessel of your womb
& your love the cascade
of unquenchable wine
the gleam that falls on my senses
the earthy splendor of life.
Yet not only love
burning kiss
or charred heart
are you, wine of life
but
friendship of all beings, trasparency
choir of discipline
surfeit of flowers.
I love on a table,
in the middle of speech,
the light of a bottle
of intelligent wine.
Let them drink
let them remember in each
drop of gold
or topaz glass
or spoon of purple
how Autumn labored
until wine filled the barrels
& may the dark man learn
in the ritual of his business
to remember the earth & its tasks
to spread the plainsong in fruit.
Here is the original in Spanish, in print & as read by Marcella Leoneli.
¡Salud!
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