Agua Sexual (Neruda)

[flyingrat42.livejournal.com]

So, Rorschach is described in Watchmen as having excelled at literature when a student at the Charlton Home, and his journal entries indicate a remarkably poetic turn of mind.  That said, I am still absolutely flabbergasted at how well some of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda's works, in translation, resonate with a Rorschach-like view of the world.

I dare you to imagine the following poem as if it were Rorschach speaking, in his gravelly voice, describing one of his dreams.  Go on.  

(I'll be over here, curled up under the bed.)

Agua Sexual
Pablo Neruda



Rolling in big solitary raindrops,
in drops like teeth,
in big thick drops of marmalade and blood,
rolling in big raindrops,
the water falls,
like a sword in drops,
like a tearing river of glass,
it falls biting,
striking the axis of symmetry, sticking to the seams of the soul,
breaking abandoned things, drenching the dark.

It is only breath, moister than weeping,
a liquid, a sweat, a nameless oil,
a sharp movement,
forming, thickening,
the water falls,
in big slow raindrops,
toward its sea, toward its dry ocean,
toward its waterless wave.

I see the vast summer, and a death rattle coming from a granary,
stores, locusts,
towns, stimuli,
rooms, girls
sleeping with their hands upon their hearts,
dreaming of bandits, of fires,
I see ships,
I see marrow trees
bristling like rabid cats,
I see blood, daggers, and women's stockings,
and men's hair,
I see beds, I see corridors where a virgin screams,
I see blankets and organs and hotels.

I see the silent dreams,
I accept the final days,
and also the origins, and also the memories,
like an eyelid atrociously and forcibly uplifted
I am looking.

And then there is this sound:
a red noise of bones,
a clashing of flesh,
and yellow legs like merging spikes of grain.
I listen among the smack of kisses,
I listen, shaken between gasps and sobs.
I am looking, hearing,
with half my soul upon the sea and half my soul upon the land,
and with the two halves of my soul I look at the world.

And though I close my eyes and cover my heart entirely,
I see a muffled waterfall,
in big muffled raindrops.
It is like a hurricane of gelatine,
like a waterfall of sperm and jellyfish.
I see a turbid rainbow form.
I see its waters pass across the bones.