April Wildflower: Ode to the Bee

As we start the planting season, I thought I’d share one of my favorite poems by Pablo Neruda, “Ode to the Bee.”  I love how he celebrates every aspect of what is often a vilified insect.  A nice reminder to us of the importance of these little creatures to help our garden grow and also an inspiration for us as we become our own little team of workers planting this Spring.

As always, if you want to share any poems, stories, or photos of your own, please email to 615greenblog@gmail.com.    

Ode to the Bee
Pablo Neruda

Plentiness of the bee!
Coming and going
from orange, blue and yellow
from the softest softness of the world -
she hastily enters on business the flower crown
and exits with golden coat and yellow boots.

Perfect with a waist of lines of dark bands
with tiny always busy head and watery wings
she enters scented windows, opens silken doors
enters the sanctum of the most fragrant love,
stumbles over small droplets of diamond dew
and from all visited houses she takes mysterious honey,
rich and heavy, of dense fragrance
and liquid light that falls down in drops
until she reaches the bee palace
and deposes the product of the flower, of the flight
and of the seraphic, secret sun.

Plentiness of the bee!
Sacred elevation of the unity,
palpitating school!

Sonorous buzzing multitudes that tune the nectar
passing swiftly drops of ambrosia -
it is the siesta of the summer of green and of the solitudes of Osorno.
Above the sun stitches his lances in the snow, lighting the volcanoes
wide as the oceans is the earth, blue is the space
ut  there is something trembling,
it is the burning heart of the summer
the heart of multiplied honey,
the noisy bee in the living comb of golden flights.

Bees, pure selfless workers,
thin, flashing proletarians, perfect fearsome militia
that in war attack with suicidal stings
buzz, buzz over the earth’s realms
family of gold, windy multitudes
shake the fire of the flowers
the thirst of the stamens
the sharp thread of fragrances
that unite the days and make the honey
surpassing the wet continents
and the farthest islands of the sky of the West

Yes:
Let the wax raise green statues
let the honey overflow in infinite tongues
let the ocean be a comb
and the Earth be a tower and tunic of flowers
Let the world be a cascade,
magnificent head of hair,
unceasing growth of Beedom!