Chestnut

Jan Voerman Jr. 

Ode To a Chestnut on the Ground 
 

From bristly foliage

you fell

complete, polished wood, gleaming mahogany,

as perfect

as a violin newly

born of the treetops,

that falling

offers its sealed-in gifts,

the hidden sweetness

that grew in secret

amid birds and leaves,

a model of form,

kin to wood and flour,

an oval instrument

that holds within it

intact delight, an edible rose.

In the heights you abandoned

the sea-urchin burr

that parted its spines

in the light of the chestnut tree;

through that slit

you glimpsed the world,

birds

bursting with syllables,

starry

dew

below,

the heads of boys

and girls,

grasses stirring restlessly,

smoke rising, rising.

You made your decision,

chestnut, and leaped to earth,

burnished and ready,

firm and smooth

as the small breasts

of the islands of America.

You fell,

you struck

the ground,

but

nothing happened,

the grass

still stirred, the old

chestnut sighed with the mouths

of a forest of trees,

a red leaf of autumn fell,

resolutely, the hours marched on

across the earth.

Because you are

only

a seed,

chestnut tree, autumn, earth,

water, heights, silence

prepared the germ,

the floury density,

the maternal eyelids

that buried will again

open toward the heights

the simple majesty of foliage,

the dark damp plan

of new roots,

the ancient but new dimensions

of another chestnut tree in the earth.

Pablo Neruda

"As perfect as a violin newly born". The joy to be found in such a small thing. "The simple majesty of foliage", Neruda's tight focus still manages to carry us into space and time - both past and future.