Ode to the Coastal Flowers/ Oda a Las Flores de la Costa

By PABLO NERUDA

 

The Isla Negra wildflowers
are blooming,
they have no names, some
seem like sand crocuses,
others
illuminate
the ground with yellow lighting.

 

I’m a pastoral poet.

 

I feed myself
like a hunter;
near the sea, at night,
I build a fire.

 

Only this flower, only this
marine solitude;
and you, glad,
simple, like an earthly rose.

 

Life
begged me to be a fighter;
I organized my heart around struggle,
and keeping hope alive:
I’m a brother
to man, to everyone.
My two hands
are named duty and love.

 

I stare
at the coastal
stones,
while the flowers that lasted
through oblivion
and winter
to raise a tiny ray
of light and fragrance
to tell me farewell
yet again
farewell to the sand,
the wood,
the fire
of the forest,
the sand
it hurts to walk along.
I’d rather stay here,
not on the streets.
I’m a pastoral poet.

 

And duty and love are my two hands.

 

 

Translated by Ilan Stavans

 

Pablo Neruda, a renowned Chilean poet, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. 

[Purchase your copy of Issue 05 here]

From the beginning, The Common has brought you transportive writing and exciting new voices. We are committed to supporting writers and maintaining free, unrestricted access to our website, but we can’t do it without you. Become an integral part of our global community of readers and writers by donating today. No amount is too small. Thank you!

Ode to the Coastal Flowers/ Oda a Las Flores de la Costa

Related Posts

Hitting a Wall and Making a Door: A Conversation between Phillis Levin and Diane Mehta

DIANE MEHTA and PHILLIS LEVIN
This conversation took place over the course of weeks—over daily phone calls and long emails, meals when they were in the same place, and a weekend in the Connecticut countryside. The poets share what they draw from each other’s work, and the work of others, exploring the pleasures of language, geometric movement, and formal constraint.

Waterfall

River Landscape

DANIELA ALCIVAR BELLOLIO
The image came to him all the time, uncontrollably, relentlessly: a face, combining incomprehension and terror perfectly, as though they were a natural combination. Pain was almost absent from this mixture, though he was certain that there, too, must have been pain. The image came to him all the time.

Anna Malihot and Olena Jenning's headshots

August 2025 Poetry Feature: Anna Malihon, translated by Olena Jennings

ANNA MALIHON
The girl with a bullet in her stomach / runs across the highway to the forest / runs without saying goodbye / through the news, the noble mold of lofty speeches / through history, geography, / curfew, a day, a century / She is so young that the wind carries / her over the long boulevard between bridges