POEM OF THE DAY BY PABLO NERUDA

ODE TO SUMMER

Summer, red violin,
bright cloud,
a buzzing
of saw
and cicada
precedes you,
your sky
is vaulted,
smooth and shining as
an eye,
and beneath its gaze,
summer,
fish of the
infinite sky,
pleasing electron,
lazy,
lethargic,
rounded bee's
belly,
fiendish
sun,
terrible, paternal sun,
sweaty as a
laboring ox,
parched sun
pounding on your head
like an unexpected
clubbing,
thirsty sun
trudging
across the sand,
summer
desert sea.
The sulphur
miner
drips
yellow sweat;
ray by ray
the pilot
flies
the celestial sun;
black
sweat
slides
down a forehead
into eyes
in the mine
at Lota,
the miner
wipes
his black
forehead,
sowed fields
blaze,
wheat rustles,
blue
insects
seek
shade,
touch
coolness,
dip
their heads
in a diamond.

Abundant
summer,
wagon
of
ripe
apples,
strawberry
mouth
in the greenness, lips
of wild plums,
roads,
of soft dust
layered
on dust,
midday,
red
copper drum,
and in the afternoon
the fire
relents,
the air
makes clover
dance, invades
the desert furnace,
a cool
star
rises
in the somber
sky,
in the crackling
though unscorched
summer
night.

-Pablo Neruda