The Cellar Image of the Day

How ya like them apples? It's four tons of them, in red and green, forming a 52-foot wide heart to celebrate Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, born 100 years ago July 12th.

what a waste of apples!

i could have eaten them... or the poor people in china...

Why Apples? Did he write odeous poetry about Granny Smiths? Maybe "an apple a day" gets you to 100 years old? Oh well, happy birthday Pablo.

That doesn't look like a lot of area, to make up four tons of apple.

Maybe they're just particularly dense apples.

Quote:

Pablo Neruda
<center>Tonight I Write (the saddest lines)
I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.</center> <center>Write, for instance: "The night is full of stars,
and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance."</center> <center>The night wind whirls in the sky and sings.</center> <center>I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.</center> <center>On nights like this, I held her in my arms.
I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky.</center> <center>She loved me, sometimes I loved her.
How could I not have loved her large, still eyes?</center> <center>I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
To think I don't have her. To feel that I've lost her.</center> <center>To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass.</center> <center>What does it matter that my love couldn't keep her.
The night is full of stars and she is not with me.</center> <center>That's all. Far away, someone sings. Far away.
My soul is lost without her.</center> <center>As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her.
My heart searches for her and she is not with me.</center> <center>The same night that whitens the same trees.
We, we who were, we are the same no longer.</center> <center>I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her.
My voice searched the wind to touch her ear.</center> <center>Someone else's. She will be someone else's. As she once
belonged to my kisses.
Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes.</center> <center>I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her.
Love is so short and oblivion so long.</center> <center>Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,
my soul is lost without her.</center> Although this may be the last pain she causes me,
and this may be the last poem I write for her.

that was written in spanish, and the translation has changed a bit from what i remember.

wow, that's beautiful. thanks LJ.

BTW, figure about 3 apples per pound, that's 24,000 apples, give or take. I think they're fudging, though. I counted only 17,894, but the left bit of the picture is cut off... Time for Wapner...

They taste good in a light apple glaze?

(I don't know, I gave up poor chinese people for Lent....haven't picked the habit up again)

LJ--are you an lover of poetry? Thank you for sharing that--I really enjoyed it! Is this poet a favorite of yours? I've never heard of him (no big shocker there) but my interest is piqued now. Thanks again!!

actually, i do appreciate poetry, but that poem is not a favorite of mine, as much as it is/was a favorite of an ex's. from high school. she used to write snatches of it on my notebooks, quote it in love letters, etc. i knew i recognized the name, but i had to google him to make the connection. there was a different translation back then that flowed a little better. in english, anyway. but, yeah, i like it. it's sad.

Well, sure, if you take apples and oranges, gently desiccate them in a convection oven at a low temperature over the course of several days, mix the dry samples with potassium bromide, ground the mixture in a small ball-bearing mill for two minutes, press the powders into a circular pellet with a diameter of 1cm and a thickness of 1mm (approximate), and use a Nicolet 740 FTIF spectrometer to compare the resulting pellets, well, sure, then I guess you CAN compare apples and oranges. Thanks, Happy Monkey, I stand corrected.

Ah, the Journal of Improbable Research. I believe that this is a sister publication of the Journal of Irreproducible Results...

http://www.jir.com/

Hey...what happened to the "make your text an html link" button, anyway?

After dark, when the rats come out to gnaw on that apple heart, it compliments the poem.

Quote:

The original in Spanish

Puedo escribir los versos m�s tristes esta noche.

Escribir, por ejemplo: "La noche est� estrellada,
y tiritan, azules, los astros, a lo lejos".

El viento de la noche gira en el cielo y canta.

Puedo escribir los versos m�s tristes esta noche.
Yo la quise, y a veces ella tambi�n me quiso.

En las noches como �sta la tuve entre mis brazos.
La bes� tantas veces bajo el cielo infinito.

Ella me quiso, a veces yo tambi�n la quer�a.
C�mo no haber amado sus grandes ojos fijos.

Puedo escribir los versos m�s tristes esta noche.
Pensar que no la tengo. Sentir que la he perdido. Oir la noche inmensa, m�s inmensa sin ella.
Y el verso cae al alma como al pasto el roc�o.

Qu� importa que mi amor no pudiera guardarla.
La noche est� estrellada y ella no est� conmigo.

Eso es todo. A lo lejos alguien canta. A lo lejos.
Mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.

Como para acercarla mi mirada la busca.
Mi coraz�n la busca, y ella no est� conmigo.

La misma noche que hace blanquear los mismos �rboles.
Nosotros, los de entonces, ya no somos los mismos.

Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero cu�nto la quise.
Mi voz buscaba el viento para tocar su o�do.

De otro. Ser� de otro. Como antes de mis besos.
Su voz, su cuerpo claro. Sus ojos infinitos.

Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero tal vez la quiero.
Es tan corto el amor, y es tan largo el olvido.

Porque en noches como �sta la tuve entre mis brazos,
mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.

Aunque �ste sea el �ltimo dolor que ella me causa,
y �stos sean los �ltimos versos que yo le escribo

Hi,
the translation is faithful. I have only found one sentence which is not exactly translated:

"Mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido."
translated as
"My soul is lost without her."
which I would translate as:
My soul is not contented(?)/satisfied with her loss (or something like that)

Anyway. Neruda, chilean, is one of the greatets poets of all time in spanish and the poem you have posted is one of the most well known (and beautiful) poems in spanish. He is called the poet of love.

Hm, that poem is actually called Poem XX, and is part of the book "Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair." The translation seems adequate. You should buy that book, and write some verses to your girl:

I have gone marking the atlas of your body
with crosses of fire.
My mouth went across: a spider trying to hide.
In you, behind you, timid, driven by thirst.