Explico Algunas Cosas
(I'm Explaining a Few Things)
by Pablo Neruda

Preguntaréis: Y dónde están las lilas? Y la metafísica cubierta de amapolas? Y la lluvia que a menudo golpeaba sus palabras llenándolas de agujeros y pájaros?	You are going to ask: and where are the lilacs? and the poppy-petalled metaphysics? and the rain repeatedly spattering its words and drilling them full of apertures and birds?
Os voy a contar todo lo que me pasa.	I'll tell you all the news.
Yo vivía en un barrio de Madrid, con campanas, con relojes, con árboles.	I lived in a suburb, a suburb of Madrid, with bells, and clocks, and trees.
Desde allí se veía el rostro seco de Castilla como un océano de cuero. Mi casa era llamada la casa de las flores, porque por todas partes estallaban geranios: era una bella casa con perros y chiquillos. Raúl, te acuerdas? Te acuerdas, Rafael? Federico, te acuerdas debajo de la tierra, te acuerdas de mi casa con balcones en donde la luz de junio ahogaba flores en tu boca? Hermano, hermano! Todo eran grandes voces, sal de mercaderías, aglomeraciones de pan palpitante, mercados de mi barrio de Argüelles con su estatua como un tintero pálido entre las merluzas: el aceite llegaba a las cucharas, un profundo latido de pies y manos llenaba las calles, metros, litros, esencia aguda de la vida, pescados hacinados, contextura de techos con sol frío en el cual la flecha se fatiga, delirante marfil fino de las patatas, tomates repetidos hasta el mar.	From there you could look out over Castille's dry face: a leather ocean. My house was called the house of flowers, because in every cranny geraniums burst: it was a good-looking house with its dogs and children. Remember, Raul? Eh, Rafel? Federico, do you remember from under the ground my balconies on which the light of June drowned flowers in your mouth? Brother, my brother! Everything loud with big voices, the salt of merchandises, pile-ups of palpitating bread, the stalls of my suburb of Arguelles with its statue like a drained inkwell in a swirl of hake: oil flowed into spoons, a deep baying of feet and hands swelled in the streets, metres, litres, the sharp measure of life, stacked-up fish, the texture of roofs with a cold sun in which the weather vane falters, the fine, frenzied ivory of potatoes, wave on wave of tomatoes rolling down the sea.
Y una mañana todo estaba ardiendo y una mañana las hogueras salían de la tierra devorando seres, y desde entonces fuego, pólvora desde entonces, y desde entonces sangre. Bandidos con aviones y con moros, bandidos con sortijas y duquesas, bandidos con frailes negros bendiciendo venían por el cielo a matar niños, y por las calles la sangre de los niños corría simplemente, como sangre de niños.	And one morning all that was burning, one morning the bonfires leapt out of the earth devouring human beings -- and from then on fire, gunpowder from then on, and from then on blood. Bandits with planes and Moors, bandits with finger-rings and duchesses, bandits with black friars spattering blessings came through the sky to kill children and the blood of children ran through the streets without fuss, like children's blood.
Chacales que el chacal rechazaría, piedras que el cardo seco mordería escupiendo, víboras que las víboras odiaran!	Jackals that the jackals would despise, stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out, vipers that the vipers would abominate!
Frente a vosotros he visto la sangre de España levantarse para ahogaros en una sola ola de orgullo y de cuchillos!	Face to face with you I have seen the blood of Spain tower like a tide to drown you in one wave of pride and knives!
Generales traidores: mirad mi casa muerta, mirad España rota: pero de cada casa muerta sale metal ardiendo en vez de flores, pero de cada hueco de España sale España, pero de cada niño muerto sale un fusil con ojos, pero de cada crimen nacen balas que os hallarán un día el sitio del corazón.	Treacherous generals: see my dead house, look at broken Spain: from every house burning metal flows instead of flowers, from every socket of Spain Spain emerges and from every dead child a rifle with eyes, and from every crime bullets are born which will one day find the bull's eye of your hearts.
Preguntaréis por qué su poesía no nos habla del sueño, de las hojas, de los grandes volcanes de su país natal?	And you'll ask: why doesn't his poetry speak of dreams and leaves and the great volcanoes of his native land
Venid a ver la sangre por las calles, venid a ver la sangre por las calles, venid a ver la sangre por las calles!	Come and see the blood in the streets, come and see the blood in the streets, come and see the blood in the streets

Pablo Neruda (July 12, 1904 – September 23, 1973) was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean poet and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. He chose his pen name after Czech poet Jan Neruda.

Neruda was accomplished in a variety of styles ranging from erotically charged love poems like his collection Twenty Poems of Love and a Song of Despair, surrealist poems, historical epics, and overtly political manifestos. In 1971 Neruda won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez once called him "the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language."[1] Neruda always wrote in green ink as it was the color of "esperanza" (hope).

On July 15, 1945, at Pacaembu Stadium in São Paulo, Brazil, he read to 100,000 people in honor of Communist revolutionary leader Luís Carlos Prestes.[2]

During his lifetime, Neruda occupied many diplomatic posts and served a stint as a senator for the Chilean Communist Party. When Conservative Chilean President González Videla outlawed communism in Chile in 1948, a warrant was issued for Neruda's arrest. Friends hid him for months in a house basement in the Chilean port of Valparaíso. Later, Neruda escaped into exile through a mountain pass near Maihue Lake into Argentina. Years later, Neruda was a close collaborator to socialist President Salvador Allende. When Neruda returned to Chile after his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Allende invited him to read at the Estadio Nacional before 70,000 people.[3]

Neruda was hospitalized with cancer at the time of the Chilean coup d'état led by Augusto Pinochet. Three days after being hospitalized, Neruda died of heart failure. Already a legend in life, Neruda's death reverberated around the world. Pinochet had denied permission to transform Neruda's funeral into a public event. However, thousands of grieving Chileans disobeyed the curfew and crowded the streets.

1. Bio from Wikipedia
   
   
2. Translation by Nathaniel Tarn, Selected Poems: A Bilingual Edition, by Pablo Neruda. London, Cape, 1970.