The Hands of Day

Pablo Neruda, William O’Daly, trans.

Pablo Neruda is one of the world’s great poets, and Copper Canyon Press has long been dedicated to publishing translations of his work in bilingual editions. The Hands of Day—at long last translated into English in its entirety—pronounces Neruda’s desire to take part in the great human making of the day. Moved by the guilt of never having worked with his hands, Neruda opens with the despairing confession, “Why did I not make a broom? / Why was I given hands at all?” The themes of hands and work grow in significance as Neruda celebrates the carpenters, longshoremen, blacksmiths, and bakers—those laborers he admires most—and shares his exuberant adoration for the earth and the people upon it.

Paperback: $17.00 list price

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ISBN: 9781556592720

Format: Paperback

LV
The Shadow

And I still do not return,
I have not returned,
on my journey I walk
in the conflagration:
within this
vein
the blood continued its quest
and I am unable to arrive
inside myself.
 
I see the plants, living people,
branches of memory,
the greeting in the eyes of things,
the tail of my dog.
I see the silence of my house, open
to my voice, and I do not shatter the walls
with a shriek of stone or pistol:
I walk over terrain that knows my feet,
I touch the bindweed that climbed
through the dark granite arches
and I slip on these things,
on the air,
because my shadow persists somewhere else
or I am the shadow of the stubborn one who is missing.

About the Author

Pablo Neruda was born Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto in Parral, Chile, in 1904. He served as consul in Burma (Myanmar) and held diplomatic posts in various East Asian and European countries. In 1945, a few years after he joined the Communist Party, Neruda was elected to the Chilean Senate. Shortly thereafter, when Chile’s political climate took a sudden turn to the right, Neruda fled to Mexico and lived as an exile for several years. He later established a permanent home …

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About the Translator

William O’Daly has translated eight books of the late-career and posthumous poetry of Chilean Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda and most recently Neruda’s first volume, Book of Twilight—a finalist for the 2018 Northern California Book Award in Translation—all published by Copper Canyon Press. O’Daly’s chapbooks of poems include The Whale in the Web, also published by Copper Canyon, The Road to Isla Negra, Water Ways (a collaboration with JS Graustein), and Yarrow and Smoke, the latter three published by Folded Word …

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Reviews

“Gorgeous, essential, humble and discerning, this book reminds us of the unity of all creation and of the human’s and the poet’s place in it.” —Foreword

“A poignant collection, tinged with the depth of human emotion and a ‘must-have’ for anyone interested in Neruda’s classic works.” —Midwest Book Review