Pablo Neruda (1904-1973, Chilean) is best known for his surrealist poems. He was also a diplomat and a senator. As a communist, a warrant for his arrest was issued in 1948. However, his friends hid him for months until he could escape from Chile to Argentina. He did not return until he accepted his Noble Prize for literature. Neruda is considered the national poet of Chile. Colombian poet Gabriel Garcia Marquez said that he was “the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language. “ And like most great artists, writers and poets, he loved cats. Here are two of his cat poems below. 

Cat’s Dream

How neatly a cat sleeps,
Sleeps with its paws and its posture,
Sleeps with its wicked claws,
And with its unfeeling blood,
Sleeps with ALL the rings a series
Of burnt circles which have formed
The odd geology of its sand-colored tail.

I should like to sleep like a cat,
With all the fur of time,
With a tongue rough as flint,
With the dry sex of fire and
After speaking to no one,
Stretch myself over the world,
Over roofs and landscapes,
With a passionate desire
To hunt the rats in my dreams.

I have seen how the cat asleeps
Would undulate, how the night flowed
Through it like dark water and at times,
It was going to fall or possibly
Plunge into the bare deserted snowdrifts.

Sometimes it grew so much in sleep
Like a tiger’s great-grandfather,
And would leap in the darkness over
Rooftops, clouds and volcanoes.

Sleep, sleep cat of the night with
Episcopal ceremony and your stone-carved moustache.
Take care of all our dreams
Control the obscurity
Of our slumbering prowess
With your relentless HEART
And the great ruff of your tail.

Ode to the cat

The animals were imperfect,

long tails, sad-looking

heads.

Little by little they started

to improve,

making themselves part of the landscape,

acquiring spots, grace, flight.

The cat,

only the cat,

appeared complete

and proud:

born completely finished,

walks alone and knows what it wants.

A man wants to be a fish and a bird,

the serpent would like to have wings,

the dog is a disoriented lion,

the engineer wants to be a poet,

the fly studies to be a swallow,

the poet tries to imitate the fly,

but the cat

only wants to be a cat

and every cat is a cat

from whiskers to tail,

from sensing the presence of a live rat,

from the night to his golden eyes.

There is no single unit

like him,

neither the moon nor the flower

have such a physique;

it is only one thing

like the sun or the topaz,

and the resilient line of its contour

firm and subtle as is

the line of the prow of a ship.

Its yellow eyes

left a single

slot

to drop in the night’s coins.

Oh little emperor without a world,

conqueror without a homeland,

minuscule tiger of the living room, nuptial

sultan of the ceiling of erotic tiles,

the wind of love in the open air,

you claim when you pass by

and you pose four delicate feet

on the floor, smelling, suspicious

of everything terrestrial,

because everything is foul

to the immaculate foot of the cat.

Oh independent beast of the house,

arrogant vestige of the night,

lazy, gymnastic and foreign,

profoundly a cat, secret police

of the bedrooms, an insignia of

vanished velvet.

Surely there is no mystery

in your method.

Perhaps you aren’t mysterious.

The whole world knows you and you belong

to the inhabitant less mysterious.

Maybe everyone believes it,

everyone believes they are the owners and proprietors,

the cat’s uncles, companions,

colleagues, disciples or friends

of their cat.

I don’t.

I don’t subscribe to that.

I don’t know the cat.

I know everything; life and its archipelago,

the sea and the immense city,

botany, the gynoecium with its deviations,

the plus and minuses of mathematics,

the volcanic funnels of the world,

the unreal hide of the crocodile,

the ignored kindness of firemen,

the blue atavism of the priest,

but I cannot figure out a cat.

My logic slipped in his indifference,

his eyes have golden numbers.

Want to know more about the cat in history, art and literature? Then Revered and Reviled is the book for you. Now available on Amazon in both paperback and Kindle formats.

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