Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

"I Explain Some Things" by Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basualto, widely known as Pablo Neruda, is an impassioned cry against the horrors of the Spanish Civil War. Unlike much of Neruda's earlier work, which luxuriates in the beauty of nature and love, this poem is direct and unsparing, demanding attention to the atrocities committed during the conflict. The poem acts as an emotional and intellectual fulcrum, pivoting Neruda's career away from the pastoral and toward the glaring political realities of his time.

The poem begins by pre-empting questions about the absence of romantic or nature-focused themes in the poem: "You are going to ask: and where are the lilacs? / and the poppy-petalled metaphysics?" By immediately dismissing these queries, Neruda emphasizes that in the face of human tragedy, such poetic preoccupations are irrelevant. He contrasts his vivid memories of Madrid before the war-a suburb "with bells, / and clocks, and trees"-with the hellish landscape it becomes: "one morning all that was burning." The juxtaposition is jarring and serves to highlight the enormity of the loss, not just of lives but of an entire way of life.

Neruda personalizes the tragedy, addressing friends like Raul, Rafel, and Federico García Lorca, the latter murdered during the Civil War. "Brother, my brother!" he cries, bringing the reader into the intimacy of his grief. Madrid is no longer a distant geographical entity; it is a community of faces and names, a living organism choked by "fire, / gunpowder from then on, / and from then on blood." The repetition of "from then on" stresses a rupture in time, a point of no return that makes any prior beauty irrelevant in the face of such devastation.

The poem also indicts the perpetrators of the violence-described as "bandits with planes and Moors," "bandits with finger-rings and duchesses," and "bandits with black friars spattering blessings." These lines are fraught with political and social criticism, targeting not just the fascist forces but the institutions that supported them, including the church.

And then there's the blood. The symbol of life is transformed into an enduring image of death: "the blood of children ran through the streets / without fuss, like children's blood." This shocking simile captures the banality of evil, how atrocious acts become commonplace in times of war.

Towards the end of the poem, Neruda makes it clear that the tragedy isn't confined to his "dead house" or to "broken Spain"; it is a nightmare from which the nation struggles to awaken: "from every house burning metal flows / instead of flowers." The beautiful past-symbolized by flowers-is irrevocably replaced by the brutal present, marked by "burning metal." Yet, even in the face of such brutality, Neruda suggests an inextinguishable defiance: "from every dead child a rifle with eyes, / and from every crime bullets are born / which will one day find / the bull's eye of your hearts."

"I Explain Some Things" is a challenge, a wake-up call to anyone who would ask why the poem isn't about "dreams and leaves / and the great volcanoes of his native land?" The poet's answer is a haunting refrain that serves as the poem's conclusion and moral center: "Come and see the blood in the streets." It's a call to witness, to not look away, and, perhaps, a hope that such witnessing might prevent future tragedies.

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