Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A book in 2 languages Five Decades: Poems 1925-1970, by Pablo Neruda (Ben Belitt, translator) This edition has side-by-side Spanish and English versions of Neruda's poems. Ben Belitt's translations are faithful, but idiomatic enough to keep the feel of the poem if an expression doesn't have an exact English equivalent. Some of the poetry is surrealistic and hard to understand in any language. The poems cover a lot of topics, from Chilean politics to types of rocks. But when I think of Neruda, I always think of his love poems: Naked, you are simple as a hand, minimal, supple, earthy, transparent, round. The lunar markings, the pathways through the apple, are yours; naked, you are slender as the wheat. The Cuban blue of midnight is your color, naked, I trace stars and tendrils in your skin; naked, you stand tawny and tremendous, a summer's wholeness in cathedral gold... -Sonnet XXVII
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