Chile, Neruda, and Elections

Neruda is one of my favorite poets. His home country of Chile has always intrigued me; in particular the location, resulting natural environment, and its politics. I just read this morning that the elections tomorrow have a very good chance of resulting in the country’s first woman president. She is very vocal about her concerns, including championing the rights of women.

From the New York Times: Señora Presidente?

By RAFAEL GUMUCIO

Published: December 9, 2005

“CHILE is one of the more conservative countries on a continent that is not especially renowned as tolerant, forward thinking or democratically minded. Divorce was legalized here just last year, and abortion continues to be a taboo subject even for the most progressive of politicians. Our social codes and racial prejudices are deeply engrained. We are an overwhelmingly Catholic country with a history that has been marked - and continues to be marked - by the power of its military.

Given this context, it is nothing short of extraordinary - even revolutionary - that the clear front-runner in the presidential vote being held on Sunday is Michelle Bachelet, a divorced mother of three who is an atheist and a member of the Socialist Party.”

It will be interesting to follow this story.

And part of a poem from Neruda:

The Wide Ocean

From: ‘Canto General’

Ocean, if you were to give, a measure, a ferment, a fruit
of your gifts and destructions, into my hand,

I would choose your far-off repose, your contour of steel,

your vigilant spaces of air and darkness,

and the power of your white tongue,

that shatters and overthrows columns,

breaking them down to your proper purity.

Not the final breaker, heavy with brine,

that thunders onshore, and creates

the silence of sand, that encircles the world,

but the inner spaces of force,

the naked power of the waters,

the immoveable solitude, brimming with lives.

It is Time perhaps, or the vessel filled

with all motion, pure Oneness,

that death cannot touch, the visceral green

of consuming totality.