How large was the black octopus?

i-0e62fc7a9d82af670a2b08b60a9b36b6-store_banner-octopus.jpg

How large was the black octopus
That darkened the day's peace?

Were its branches made of iron
And its eyes, of dead fire?

And why did the tricolored whale
Cut me off on the road?

Chilean poet and communist politician Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalt, published this poem in The Book of Questions (translated by William O'Daly) under the penname Pablo Neruda. In 1971, Neruda was awarded the Nobel Prize, despite many of the committee members opposition to Neruda's previous praise of Stalinist dictatorship.

The illustration (black cut-out over hand-painted paper) is from Kristen Scribner from the Animal ABC Book.

More like this

tags: Oda a la Tristeza, Pablo Neruda, poetry, National Poetry Month April is National Poetry Month, and I plan to post one poem per day every day this month (If you have a favorite poem that you'd like me to share, feel free to email it to me). My poetry suggestions are starting to run dry, which…
Photos purported to show 'mystery animals' are always great fun. One of the most perplexing and curious of the lot was taken on a box Brownie camera near Goroke, western Victoria, Australia, in 1964. I'm referring, of course, to Rilla Martin's photo of a strange, striped, running mammal. This…
tags: Things I Didn't Know I Loved, Nazim Hikmet, poetry, National Poetry Month April is National Poetry Month, and I plan to post one poem per day, every day this month (If you have a favorite poem that you'd like me to share, feel free to email it to me). My poetry suggestions are starting to run…
There may need to be a significant revision in the recent description of one of humanity's oldest ancestors. Ardipithecus ramidus (or "Ardi" for short), the 4.4 million year old hominid fossil discovery, has been a godsend to paleoanthropologists (pun intended). But one of the key researchers has…