I saw a snapshot of your room -
a cool haven with timber beams
festooned with shapely wooden women -
voyagers you sought in dreams -
mermaids' faces, muses, wenches,
painted tresses, painted sleeves;
bosoms riding ocean's trenches,
thrusting against tempest's spleen;
phantoms haunting sleepless crewmen
snared in moonlight's eerie sheen,
peering into dog-watch gloom,
bewitched by siren, woman, lumen.
Torsos to beguile Poseidon -
he whose trident drags ships under -
angels of auspicious omen
against lightning, gale and thunder
hover upon wall and rafter:
eyes whose lids will never close
weigh, with enigmatic mien,
your eloquence, their silent laughter.
Could mute sybils have inspired
those strange words, like a well in sand:
I learned the art of seafaring,
only to travel over land…?
Pablo Neruda was an inveterate collector of
all manner of curios, exotica and esoterica -
objects he liked to surround himself with for
the pleasure of contemplating them and also
as stimuli for his poetry. Ships in bottles
and ships' figureheads in the form of women's
torsos were among the many items reflecting
his lifelong fascination with the sea.