by Pablo Neruda
–English Translation by Caleb Beissert

The whole winter, the entire battle,
all the nests of damp iron,
in your firmness traversed by air,
in your wild city they are lifted.

The renegade prison of stones,
the submerged threads of thorn,
turn your barbed-wire fence hair
into a pavilion of mineral shadows.

Prickly weeping, eternity of water,
mountain of scales, horseshoes lightning,
your tormented house is constructed
with petals of pure geology.

The high winter kisses your armor
and covers you with destroyed lips:
the violent aroma of spring
breaks its thirst in your implacable statue:
and grave autumn waits hopelessly
to lavish gold in your green stature.

Caleb Beissert is a poet, translator, musician, and freelance writer from Washington, D.C., now living in Asheville, North Carolina. His work has appeared in International Poetry Review, Tar River Poetry, Asheville Poetry Review, WNC Magazine, and Beatitude: Golden Anniversary, 1959-2009. Beissert’s first book, a selection of English-language adaptations of the poetry of Pablo Neruda and Federico García Lorca, Beautiful: Translations from the Spanish, was published by New Native Press in 2013.