the friday feed: ode to maize {april 14, 2023}

To keep with the celebration of National Poetry Month, the next three “Friday Feeds” will focus on food.

In 1961, Pablo Neruda, a Chilean poet, wrote “odas elementales” that were translated into English as The Elementary Odes. While food seems to be ordinary and mundane in our everyday lives, Neruda celebrates food. In his Ode to Maize, Neruda says that maize is one of the staple foods for the South American people. It enriches the diets, especially for the peasants, miners, and working people. The maize shoot is a green lance covered with golden grains. It is a weapon against hunger for the poor. When cornmeal reached the table of the hungry miners, it was a treasure. Its radiance lit up the miners’ and workers’ faces.

Ode To Maize by Pablo Neruda

America, from a grain

of maize you grew

to crown

with spacious lands

the ocean foam.

A grain of maize was your geography.

From the grain

a green lance rose,

was covered with gold,

to grace the heights

of Peru with its yellow tassels.

But, poet, let

history rest in its shroud;

praise with your lyre

the grain in its granaries:

sing to the simple maize in the kitchen.

First, a fine beard

fluttered in the field

above the tender teeth

of the young ear.

Then the husks parted

and fruitfulness burst its veils

of pale papyrus

that grains of laughter

might fall upon the earth.

To the stone,

in your journey,

you returned.

Not to the terrible stone,

the bloody

triangle of Mexican death,

but to the grinding stone,

sacred

stone of your kitchens.

There, milk and matter,

strength-giving, nutritious

cornmeal pulp,

you were worked and patted

by the wondrous hands

of dark-skinned women.

Wherever you fall, maize,

whether into the

splendid pot of partridge, or among

country beans, you light up

the meal and lend it

your virginal flavor.

Oh, to bite into

the steaming ear beside the sea

of distant song and deepest waltz.

To boil you

as your aroma

spreads through

blue sierras.

But is there

no end

to your treasure?

In chalky, barren lands

bordered

by the sea, along

the rocky Chilean coast,

at times

only your radiance

reaches the empty

table of the miner.

Your light, your cornmeal, your hope

pervades America's solitudes,

and to hunger

your lances

are enemy legions.

Within your husks,

like gentle kernels,

our sober provincial

children's hearts were nurtured,

until life began

to shuck us from the ear.