Neruda, I Fail To... Poem by Bijay Kant Dubey

Neruda, I fail to understand you,
A poet or a lover or a communist or a diplomat,
Who were you?
I could not your shallow heart.

Pablo Neruda, a mapping of your brain
Shows it divided among
Burma, Ceylon and Jakarta,
But for what were you there?
I do not understand.

Neruda, you say it about a Burmese woman
You had been in love with,
The South Asian woman in Ceylon
The pariah girl,
But the Jakarta diary know I it not.

Neruda, I do not understand
What had it been your job,
Who were you,
An ambassador
Cultural obviously not, but for commerce and business?
What had it been you business,
Admit and confess you frankly.

Neruda, the world loved you,
But loved I not,
I saw you, but felt you it not,
Just saw the portrait
Taking you to be a traitor, a conspirator.

A lover were you,
A lover of women,
A communist,
A lover of women, labour stuffs and drinks,
The mind you strove to know,
Not the heart, the soul.

Neruda, what did you hold up
And for what,
What were you for,
Whit had it been your mission,
Was it solely political or humanitarian?

Neruda, the women in your life
Seek I to know, to read them,
Know their identities
Rather than your poetry, love poetry!

Maryka Antonieta Hagenaar Vogelzang,
Delia del Carril,
Matilde Urrutia,
I have not,
Their biographical notes.

Neruda, a propagandist
Were you,
A communist agent
On an espionage mission,
God knows, how could you turn
Into a diplomat
Just writing a few poems at some young age?

Neruda, what were you,
Say you,
A poet,
A diplomat,
A communist
Or a lover?

But frustrates me more
Is this
That you were a male chauvinist
A sexual one
As the feminists have come to grapple it.


Were you,
A communist agent
On an espionage mission,
God knows, how could you turn
Into a diplomat
Just writing a few poems at some young age?

Neruda, how could a poet be a diplomat
Without being trained
An emissary or a messenger,
Without having known international relations,
I don't know?

Even if you were a poet, Neruda,
You were but a struggling poet
In Ceylon, Burma, Indonesia
Trying to hone in
Your poetic art!

Neruda, your forced love-making
With a South Asian woman
In Ceylon
Frustrates me in reading your memoir
To think,
What sort of lover were you and your love!

Neruda, were you a communist
With a girl by your side
Just as a Marxist or Leninist lives by that type of literature,
Wine and womanizing
So were you,
Had you not a good view of women?