Neruda diss

["Chris Brady" <cdbrady@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

To the dissconnected critic
(from La Chascona, September 13, 1973 ):

Ah, sighs Strand,
mutely before the muse,
what a tragedy Neruda was a Red!
His current collection would be
so much better
if the editor
  had decisively split
  his political work
off the edge of his desk   and
into the dustbin of poetry.

(But we Reds:
          oh, yes-yes  —a head of cabbage!
How delightful!
No, really!
A rutabaga, a postage stamp, an octopus, a bird,
The ephemera of ordinary days
Made special by the eye, the mind, the hand
of the working poet,
Like the class whom the effete
forget.

We will remember and love
Neruda
For our politics and his poetry are inseparable.