A Lemon Poem by Pablo Neruda

A Lemon

Rating: 3.4


Out of lemon flowers
loosed
on the moonlight, love's
lashed and insatiable
essences,
sodden with fragrance,
the lemon tree's yellow
emerges,
the lemons
move down
from the tree's planetarium

Delicate merchandise!
The harbors are big with it-
bazaars
for the light and the
barbarous gold.
We open
the halves
of a miracle,
and a clotting of acids
brims
into the starry
divisions:
creation's
original juices,
irreducible, changeless,
alive:
so the freshness lives on
in a lemon,
in the sweet-smelling house of the rind,
the proportions, arcane and acerb.

Cutting the lemon
the knife
leaves a little cathedral:
alcoves unguessed by the eye
that open acidulous glass
to the light; topazes
riding the droplets,
altars,
aromatic facades.

So, while the hand
holds the cut of the lemon,
half a world
on a trencher,
the gold of the universe
wells
to your touch:
a cup yellow
with miracles,
a breast and a nipple
perfuming the earth;
a flashing made fruitage,
the diminutive fire of a planet.

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Pink Poozle 12 April 2009

Its ok, your other poems like 'A dogs Dead' is better. Tremedously thoughtful! You could be a writer when your older! Your really good! I have gave you a 8. Its a pretty good poem! Even though I am a short term writer. I have had a book published before, with one of my poems wrote in it! You could do that! Thats how good I think you are! Its just this poem that I dont like very much, but your others are amazingly fantastic! Congratulations! P.S: The one a bout The Dog brought tears to my eyes! You are a wonderous writer! From Amy Gibbs

20 69 Reply
Luke Johnson 15 December 2009

Pablo Neruda is a sexualized version of William Williams. There is nothing difficult about his poetry. The beauty is in his ability to take the mundane and make it near super natural. I don't know how Pankaj does not understand this work. Neruda is easily a top twenty poet of all time.

35 31 Reply
Elizabeth Thomson 19 September 2011

He so beautifully describes lemons :)

33 32 Reply
Allemagne Roßmann 29 September 2011

mark of a masterpiece...superb

31 34 Reply
Samuel Augustus 09 November 2012

Neruda painted with words, into the canvas of our minds. brilliant.

31 31 Reply
M Asim Nehal 03 July 2021

Crafty poem. Now I can have my lemonade.

2 0 Reply
Sylvia Frances Chan 03 July 2021

5 Stars fullest on Top for this amazing poem about a Lemon. Congratulations being chosen as The Modern Poem Of The Day

0 0 Reply
Sylvia Frances Chan 03 July 2021

All about a lemon, described in this poem in a most delicate way, with tints of sensual passionate stresses in an extrovert way typical by the great Poet Pablo Neruda. Very impressive!

1 0 Reply
Ratnakar Mandlik 19 June 2019

All about the lemon narrated with great deliberation and in an exquisite style by the master craftsman.

2 0 Reply
Unnikrishnan E S 08 October 2018

The best poetry, of course by Neruda and the best fiction it’s, no doubt, Marquez. How I regret, I don’t read Spanish.☹️

2 0 Reply
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