Pablo Neruda’s “Plenos Poderes”:
The Dark Prairie and Deep Ocean of Knowledgeable Inspiration
Dr. Robert Zaslavsky
The work of the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda1 (1904-1973) is one of the richest
examples of sustained lyrical poetic excellence in the western hemisphere. It combines
the kind of density of imagery and meaning that one finds in the Shakespearean sonnet
with the expansive rhythmic sensibility of Whitman’s free verse.
Within Neruda’s body of work, the poem “Plenos Poderes” (“Full Powers”) is a
seminal expression of the core of his poetic aesthetics.
I. The Poem2
A puro sol escribo, a plena calle
From the pure sun I write, from the full street,
a pleno mar, en donde puedo canto,
from the full sea, in [a place] where I am-able, I sing,
sólo la noche errante me detiene
only the errant night detains me,
pero en su interrupción recojo espacio,
but in its interruption I recapture space,
recojo sombra para mucho tiempo.
5
I recapture the shadow for much time.
El trigo negro de la noche crece
The black wheat of the night grows
mientras mis ojos miden la pradera
while my eyes measure the prairie
y así de sol a sol hago las llaves:
and thus from sun to sun I make the keys:
busco en la oscuridad las cerraduras
I search in the obscurity [for] the locks
y voy abriendo al mar las puertas rotas
10
and I go [on] opening broken doors to the sea
hasta llenar armarios con espuma.
until filling armoires with foam.
Y no me canso de ir y de volver,
I do not tire myself from going and from turning [back],
no me para la muerte con su piedra,
death with its stone does not stop me,
no me canso de ser y de no ser.
I do not tire myself from being and from not being.
1
This is a pseudonym. His birth name was Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto.
The text is taken from Pablo Neruda, Five Decades: A Selection (Poems: 1925-1970), ed. and tr. Ben Belitt
(NY, Grove, 1974). However, the translation is mine, because Belitt’s translation is too imprecise to serve
as the basis for a close reading that would be based on a text that would be literal, clear, and reliable to
English readers with no knowledge of Spanish.
2
1
A veces me pregunto si de donde
15
At times I ask myself if from where
si de padre o de madre o cordillera
if from [my] father or from [my] mother or a [mountain-]range
heredé los deberes minerales,
I inherited [my] mineral debts,
los hilos de un océano encendido
the threads of an enkindled ocean
y sé sigo y sigo porque sigo
and I know [this:] I follow and I follow because I follow
y canto porque canto y porque canto.
20
and I sing because I sing and because I sing.
No tiene explicación lo que acontece
An explanation does not hold that which happens
cuando cierro los ojos y circulo
when I shut [my] eyes and I circulate
como entre dos canales submarinos,
as between two undersea channels,
uno a morir me lleva en su ramaje
the one [of which] elevates me toward dying in its branchage
y el otro canta para que yo cante.
25
and the other [of which] sings in order that I may sing.
Así pues de no ser estoy compuesto
Thus since I am composed of non-being
y como el mar asalta el arrecife
and as the sea assaults the reef
con cápsulas saladas de blancura
with salty capsules of whiteness
y retrata la piedra con la ola,
and the stone retreats with the wave,
así lo que en la muerte me rodea
30
abre en mí la ventana de la vida
opens in me the window of life
y en pleno paroxismo estoy durmiendo.
A plena luz camino por la sombra.
thus that which wheels-around me in death
and I am sleeping in a full paroxysm.
33
From full light I stride through the shadow.
II. The Commentary
[Versification] The poem contains seven stanzas of pentameter lines, the majority of
which are either iambic pentameter (12, 18, 29) or the Spanish equivalent of iambic
pentameter (four iambic feet followed by an amphibrach).3 Only one of the lines in the
poem (23) is unrhymed.
[¶1] The first line consists of two three-word prepositional phrases between which
the central word of the line is the first person singular finite verb “escribo” (“I write”).
That central word announces that the speaker is a writer. That writer is explaining the
sources or the inspirations for his or her writing. Two such sources are cited: “the pure
sun” (“puro sol”) and “the full street” (“plena calle”). In general terms, these two
sources seem to represent nature as a whole, on the one hand, and human nature, on
the other hand. In addition, the word “sol” invites one to see a pun on the words “calle”
(“street”) and “caliente” (”hot”). It is as if the speaker wishes to suggest that human
society warms humans socially as much as the sun warms humans naturally.
3
The frequency of feminine final syllables in Spanish often causes the fifth foot to extend from an iamb to
an amphibrach (1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 15, 20, 21, 25, 27, 28, 30, 31, 32, 33). See Appendix for a tabulation of the
poem’s metrical structure.
2
In the second line, the speaker substitutes “canto” (“I sing”) for “escribo.” In other
words, the speaker shifts from a verb that denotes writing in general to a verb that
connotes writing poetry specifically. The speaker, then, is a poet.
However, before making this switch of verbs, the speaker adds a third source of
inspiration, namely “the full sea” (“pleno mar”).
The three sources of inspiration enumerated so far (sun, street, sea) correspond to
three of the four basic elements that the ancients believed to be the building blocks of
the world: sun is fire, street is earth, and sea is water. Only air is missing, but that will
be supplied in the fourth line with “espacio” (“space”).
The speaker says that he or she sings wherever he or she is able. This is as odd a
locution in Spanish as it is in English. The more normal or typical statement would be,
“I sing whenever I am able” (en cuando puedo canto), not “I sing wherever I am able.” By
putting it in this way, the speaker suggests that place (location and surroundings) is
more important to the poet as poet than time is. In other words, the speaker is able to
poetize at any time as long as the speaker is in the right place. One might call the right
place—using terminology from don Juan Matus in Carlos Castaneda’s novels—one’s
power place, one’s place of power. This makes sense when one considers that the finite
verb “puedo” (“I am able”) alludes to the “poderes” (“powers”) of the poem’s title.
Indeed, the finite verb “puedo,” which is most effectively translated into English as “I
am able,” literally means “I have the power.”
Therefore, certain places are power places for the poet. The use of the title adjective
(“plena”/”pleno”) for the street and for the sea consecutively suggests that the street
and the sea are two such power places.
However, in the third line, the speaker refers to time, to a period of time that detains
the speaker, a period of time that literally holds-back or delays the speaker, namely “the
night” (“la noche”). The speaker presents the night, not as a positive period of time, but
rather as an “interupción,” a quality that is rhythmically emphasized by the spondaic
foot of its third and fourth (last) syllables. The night is presented as an “interruption,”
literally a break in the normal flow of time. In addition, the night is “errante,” a word
with two related meanings: wandering and erring, i.e., physical wandering and mental
wandering, roaming around and making mistakes (errors). This word suggests that, on
one level, the night is the literal nighttime during which we sleep, but on another level,
it is the darkness of the unknown, as opposed to the light of the known. This already
prepares one, then, for the last line of the poem in which “the pure sun” (“puro sol”) is
replaced by “full light” (“plena luz”).
The night, the unknown, is a gap (an interruption) on the path of one’s knowing the
world. In that gap, one recaptures space, which suggests openness. One must open
one’s mind in order to correct or to supplement what one already knows. In recapturing
space, one also recaptures “the shadow” (“sombra”), i.e., one takes possession of what
one does not know and integrates it into what one does know, which allows one to
move out of the little time of ignorance to the “mucho tiempo” (“much time”) of
expanded knowledge.
[¶2] In the second stanza, the speaker returns to the night in order to explain how
sinking into the night is a preparation for emerging into the light of the sun. Therefore,
now the speaker presents the night as a place of growth, as a “prairie” (“la pradera”)
rich with “black wheat” (“el trigo negro”). Because the wheat is black, at first one is able
to see only the prairie as a whole without being able to distinguish its parts (the stalks
of wheat) from each other. However, by studying (searching: “busco”/”I search”) this
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expanse of darkness or “obscurity” (“la oscuridad”), one begins to see, as if in repeated
bursts of sunlight (“de sol a sol”), “the keys” (“las llaves”) to understanding or
knowledge. Of course, the keys alone are not enough. One also has to find “the locks”
(“las cerraduras”) that the keys will open, locks in the doors to the rooms of knowledge.
The rooms of knowledge turn out to be a “sea” (el “mar”), presumably the “full sea”
(“pleno mar”) of the second line. The speaker goes on opening the doors to the sea of
knowledge, doors that are broken. Presumably the doors are broken because of all those
who have tried unsuccessfully to break them down because they were unable to find, or
unwilling to look for, those keys. This means that knowledge cannot be obtained by
force or violence.
In contrast to the door batterers, the speaker seeks knowledge in a thoughtful, nonviolent way, namely the way of finding the keys. When the speaker opens the doors, the
speaker fills “armoires” with “foam” (“espuma”), which concretely alludes to the foam
of the waves or breakers of the sea.
An armoire is an elegant, expensive bureau with drawers. However, what are the
armoires to which the speaker refers? One must realize that they are not actual, physical
armoires any more than the sea is an actual, physical sea. Rather, these armoires are
mental storage chests that the speaker allows to fill up (“llenar”) with the fullness of
knowledge that he or she uncovers. In addition, since the word “armario” is related—
both in its Latin origin and in the Spanish derivative therefrom—to arms, to weapons,
and since an armario was originally a weapons locker, one can infer that knowledge is a
powerful weapon.
[¶3] Stanza three is the first of the three three-line central stanzas of the poem.
In this third stanza, the speaker says that the process of seeking knowledge does not
tire one out, and the speaker says this twice (12, 14). In that echo-like iteration, one
cannot help but notice the closeness of the finite verb “canso” (“I tire”) to the finite verb
“canto” (”I sing”), which had occurred before (2) and which will occur thrice in the
third of the three-line central stanzas (20) and twice in the sixth stanza (25). Presumably,
then, what keeps the speaker from being exhausted by the quest for knowledge is the
speaker’s ability, the speaker’s power, to turn his or her labors into songs, into poetry.
In addition, because the speaker’s life is full and non-fatiguing, the speaker does not
fear “death” (“la muerte”) and “its stone” (“su piedra”). The “piedra” (“stone”)
represents two things simultaneously: (1) the tombstone that stands above one’s grave
after one is dead and buried; and (2) death itself as a millstone dragging one down and
stopping one in one’s attempt to lead a full life. In other words, the awareness that one
will die may make one afraid to live unless one has something in one’s life that allows
one to rise above one’s fear of death. In the speaker’s case, what allows the speaker to
rise above the fear of death is the quest for knowledge and the desire to share that
knowledge with others through poetry.
Therefore, the speaker is tired out neither by “being” (“ser”), which seems to mean
both living and knowing, nor by “not being” (“no ser”), which seems to mean both
death and ignorance. In other words, neither leading the challenging life of the writer
nor fearing death tires the speaker out.
[¶4] Sometimes the speaker wonders what is the source of his or her “deberes
minerals” (“mineral debts”). In other words, the speaker wonders what is the source of
the inner ore or wealth that he or she owes to the world and that he or she presumably
repays to the world by writing poetry.
4
The speaker wonders whether he or she inherited that gift of wealth from parents
(“padre…madre”) or from nature (“the [mountain-]range”: “cordillera”).
This is the only stanza whose last line is an instance of enjambment, i.e., it is the only
stanza whose last line does not end with a period, but instead it spills over into the next
stanza.
[¶5] In this stanzaic continuation of the preceding, the speaker says what the
inherited mineral debts are. They are “the threads of an enkindled ocean” (“los hilos de
un océano encendido”). This ocean is presumably the sea of the first two stanzas, now
expanded by the speaker’s efforts into a totality, a whole, which is somehow greater
than the sum of its parts (the seas of which it is composed). This is the ocean of
knowledge. It is an enkindled ocean, i.e., it is the paradoxical phenomenon of an ocean
on fire, of water on fire.
This enkindled ocean seems to be three things simultaneously: (1) a woven tapestry
(“the threads”/”los hilos”); (2) a large body of water (“un océano”/”an ocean”); and (3)
a blazing fire (an “encendido”/”enkindled” thing). In other words it is an intricately
interconnected reservoir of knowledge that is the source in humans of warmth and
light. In addition, the threads are also both the waves of the ocean and the tongues of
flame.
The speaker relentlessly follows (“sigo y sigo porque sigo”) the threads, and the
speaker does so—as the repetitive language suggests—simply because he or she has to
do so, i.e., because it is the speaker’s nature to do so. The speaker is not able to explain it
any further, just as the speaker is not able to explain any further his or her writing of
poetry (“canto porque canto y porque canto”). The speaker sings (writes poetry) simply
because he or she does: that is simply who and what the speaker is.
[¶6] In stanza 6, the speaker says that he or she is not able to explain himself or
herself, i.e., there is not an explanation for who and what the speaker is. More precisely,
there is no explanation for who and what the speaker is when the speaker shuts his or
her eyes, i.e., when the speaker lets imagination free to circulate beneath the sea of
knowledge.
That sea of knowledge branches out toward death, i.e., it lifts the speaker
unfearingly toward the speaker’s own death. In addition, that sea of knowledge sings to
the speaker and enables the speaker to sing to others.
These two aspects of the sea—the speaker suggests—are interconnected: because the
speaker writes poetry that can give the speaker a kind of deathlessness or immortality,
the speaker is able to rise to meet actual physical death without fear.
[¶7] In the final stanza, the speaker brings together and summarizes all that the
speaker has said so far. This summary circulates (cf. 22) or circles the speaker back to
the beginning of the poem. Just as lines 1 and 2 had the adjective “plena”/”pleno” in
that order, now in the last two lines, in reverse or mirror order, one sees
“pleno”/”plena.”
In addition, the “luz” (“light”) and “camino” (“I stride”) and “sombra” (“shadow”)
of the last line echo the first stanza’s “sol” (“sun”) and “calle” (“street”) and “sombra”
(“shadow”) [1 and 5]. Only the shadow is still the shadow.
The speaker says that he or she is composed of “non-being” (“no ser”: cf. 14). Insofar
as all humans are mortal, i.e., insofar as all humans must die, all humans are composed
of non-being. However, the sea of knowledge in which one can immerse oneself erodes
5
one’s fear of death. That fear of death is represented by “the stone” (“la piedra”) that is
both the earlier tombstone/millstone (13) and the coral of “the reef” (“el arrecife”)
against which the sea breaks in waves. One should note the pun here on “assaults”
(“asalta”) and “salty” (“saladas”).
What wheels around one in death, namely the natural earth in which one is buried,
is also the source of one’s life. In addition, it is precisely the awareness of one’s own
mortality that opens up for one “the window of life” (“la ventana de la vida”).
Furthermore, in the sleep in which one dreams, i.e., in the sleep that frees the
imagination, one experiences a shuddering, a shiver, a paroxysm, that reflects the
fullness inside one, the fullness of one’s knowledgeable image-making ability. This
image-making ability, this full power of one’s imagination, lights one’s way as one
progresses/strides through the shadow of ignorance and death that characterizes so
much of human life.
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Appendix: Metrical Structure of “Plenos Poderes”
1
2
3
4
5
iamb
iamb
trochee
trochee
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
trochee
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
spondee
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
amphibrach
amphibrach
amphibrach
amphibrach
amphibrach
6
7
8
9
10
11
iamb
trochee
iamb
trochee
iamb
trochee
iamb
iamb
iamb
spondee
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
amphibrach
amphibrach
amphibrach
amphibrach
amphibrach
amphibrach
12
13
14
iamb
trochee
trochee
iamb
iamb
trochee
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
amphibrach
spondee
15
16
17
iamb
trochee
trochee
iamb
trochee
trochee
iamb
iamb
trochee
iamb
iamb
spondee
amphibrach
amphibrach
amphibrach
18
19
20
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
trochee
iamb
iamb
trochee
iamb
iamb
trochee
iamb
iamb
trochee
amphibrach
21
22
23
24
25
iamb
trochee
trochee
trochee
iamb
iamb
trochee
spondee
iamb
iamb
iamb
amphibrach
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
amphibrach
iamb
amphibrach
amphibrach
amphibrach
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
spondee
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
iamb
amphibrach
amphibrach
amphibrach
iamb
amphibrach
amphibrach
amphibrach
amphibrach
7