Ode To Wine Poem by Pablo Neruda

Ode To Wine

Rating: 3.1


Day-colored wine,
night-colored wine,
wine with purple feet
or wine with topaz blood,
wine,
starry child
of earth,
wine, smooth
as a golden sword,
soft
as lascivious velvet,
wine, spiral-seashelled
and full of wonder,
amorous,
marine;
never has one goblet contained you,
one song, one man,
you are choral, gregarious,
at the least, you must be shared.
At times
you feed on mortal
memories;
your wave carries us
from tomb to tomb,
stonecutter of icy sepulchers,
and we weep
transitory tears;
your
glorious
spring dress
is different,
blood rises through the shoots,
wind incites the day,
nothing is left
of your immutable soul.
Wine
stirs the spring, happiness
bursts through the earth like a plant,
walls crumble,
and rocky cliffs,
chasms close,
as song is born.
A jug of wine, and thou beside me
in the wilderness,
sang the ancient poet.
Let the wine pitcher
add to the kiss of love its own.

My darling, suddenly
the line of your hip
becomes the brimming curve
of the wine goblet,
your breast is the grape cluster,
your nipples are the grapes,
the gleam of spirits lights your hair,
and your navel is a chaste seal
stamped on the vessel of your belly,
your love an inexhaustible
cascade of wine,
light that illuminates my senses,
the earthly splendor of life.

But you are more than love,
the fiery kiss,
the heat of fire,
more than the wine of life;
you are
the community of man,
translucency,
chorus of discipline,
abundance of flowers.
I like on the table,
when we're speaking,
the light of a bottle
of intelligent wine.
Drink it,
and remember in every
drop of gold,
in every topaz glass,
in every purple ladle,
that autumn labored
to fill the vessel with wine;
and in the ritual of his office,
let the simple man remember
to think of the soil and of his duty,
to propagate the canticle of the wine.

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
John Tiong Chunghoo 04 July 2006

the poem flows like a glass of wine to its very last dropp and mersmerising. good workpablo. keep it up.

5 6 Reply
Cameron 03 December 2018

Very long. Writes alot of different random thoughts about wine.

1 2 Reply
DM Wallace 07 May 2018

This poem saves me from 25 years of selling wine as a wholesaler, when I was, I am, really a poet who drinks in the beauty that is even now, still renewed within me, that blesses me, and releases me from the mundane work of commerce with no Love inside!

4 1 Reply
Henry 22 February 2018

You know he's dead right?

4 2 Reply
Brian Jani 27 April 2014

Very nice layout of words

4 4 Reply
Kentucky Refugee 06 January 2008

Neruda has such a unique ability to infuse the everyday with an almost ritual-like sacredness. This poem evokes all of the richness of earth's abundance and reminds us that our food and drink are the distilled essences of the goodness of life.

11 6 Reply
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