by Pablo Neruda
–English Translation by Caleb Beissert

In Pucatrihue lives
the voice, the salt, the air.

In Pucatrihue.

In Pucatrihue the evening
swells
like a flag
when raised.

In Pucatrihue.

In Pucatrihue a day
gets lost and doesn’t return
from the jungle.

In Pucatrihue.

In Pucatrihue I believe
I know not why nor when
my roots
were born.

I lost them to the world.
Or I left them forgotten
in a dark, worm-eaten
hotel in Europe.

I searched for them nevertheless,
and all I found were the mines,
the old skeletons
of yellow marble.

Ay, Delia, my roots
are in Pucatrihue.
I don’t know why, or how,
or since when, but
they are in Pucatrihue.

Yes.

In Pucatrihue.

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.