Right, Comrade, It's the Hour of the Garden
by Pablo Neruda

Right, comrade, it's the hour of the garden
and the hour up in arms, each day
follows from flower or blood:
our time surrenders us to an obligation
to water the jasmines
or bleed to death in a dark street:
virtue or pain blows off
into frozen realms, into hissing embers,
and there never was a choice:
heaven's roads,
once the by-ways of saints,
are jammed now with specialists.

Already the horses have vanished.

Heroes hop around like toads,
mirrors live out the emptiness
because the party is happening somewhere else,
wherever we aren't invited
and fights frame themselves in doorjambs.

That's why this is the last call,
the tenth clear
ringing of my bell:
to the garden, comrade, to the pale lily;
to the apple tree, to the intransigent carnation,
to the fragrance of lemon blossoms,
and then to the ultimatums of war.

Ours is a lank country
and on the naked edge of her knife
our frail flag burns.

- Pablo Neruda

Your Letter Is Delightful
by Breyten Breytenbach

your letter is delightful, larger and lighter
than thoughts of a flower when the dream
is the earth of the garden,
as your letter opens
there is an unfolding of sky, of word from the outside
of ample spaces,

I slept in green pastures
I lay on the ridge of the valley of the shadow of death
during the last watch of night
listening to the condemned
being led down corridors underground,
how they sing,

their breaths in their mouths
like residents
about to quite a burning city, how they sing
their breaths like shackles,
how they sing
they who will jolt from obscurity to the light
they who will be posted to no destination,
terror fills me at the desecration

the table before me, in the presence of my enemies,
is bare; I have ash on my head,
my cup is empty,

I fled to your letter, to read
that the small orange tree is a mass of white blossoms
opening with the sun,
I could smell it on the balcony,
I can smell you
more delicious, lighter than thoughts of a flower
in this dismal night,

I will be suspended by the sky of your words,
allow me to live in your letter
all the days of my life

envoi,
your letter is delightful, stretching out lighter
than thoughts of a flower when the dream
is the earth of a garden,
as your letter opens
there is an unfolding of sky, of word from the outside
of memory