Don't trip.

Nabokov flash fiction analysis tomorrow, beginning drafts of an original short fiction piece.
Thoughts for maintaining direction with the existential-to-post-modern focus? I think we need to hash that out again relatively soon.
Yours truly.

Preguntas.

Do deaf kittens
mew with un-opposable paws?

Do signs,
like literature, slap?

How goes
honest evenings alone?

And is honesty yours
when your answer don't know?

"XIX", from Neruda's "Book Of Questions" 1973

Have they counted the gold

in the cornfields? 

Do you know that in Patagonia

in midday, mist is green?

Who sings in deepest water

in the abandoned lagoon?

At what does the watermelon laugh

when it's murdered?

     Neruda's Book Of Questions, published posthumously, is a curious work of simple aesthetic meandering. It is nonetheless impossible to withdraw much meaning from its pages. The first couplet here contains many possibilities. To me, it reflects an oversight of the relative wealth possessed by the farmsman.  With this interpretation, "the gold in the cornfields" may refer to the simple joys that the burden of labor contrasts in the common man's life. Historically, it could represent the longevity of heritage and culture in Latin America. Despite the many conquests that destabilized working systems of government, and despite the many riches that were seized, there is still a common humanity in things so arbitrary as cornfields. 

     The second couplet is mysterious. The text, overall, seeks a near childish simplicity in harmless images of surreal joy. On page XLIV, for instance, the author laments "where is the child I was? Still inside me or gone?". This is the theme I will suggest the second couplet corresponds to; A strive towards innocent wonder. 

     The third couplet is a reference to the sirens of greek myth. The text is rife with them. Aesthetically, it is an intense questioning of feminine mystery – futile as it receives no answer. There is much mythological reference in this work, perhaps harking to an imbedded spiritualism in its author. I tend to believe that in this broad array of questioning reference, the author also shakes his head at the conventional moral lock-down present in modern religion that often makes a point of stifling intellectual doubt. In a line from page XXV, he wonders " how do we know which is God/among the Gods of calcutta?". Perhaps he is also considering the unification of popular religion in post-conquest Latin America; Considering that loss of culture. 

     The final lines are a mental play on images – that of a sliced watermelon characterized into a post-mortal grin. The powerful composition counts on the reader's easy connection to the referenced shape, as well as the unusual thought – somewhat morbid – of being overjoyed with death. Beyond its base of structure, the image's full scope of reactive questionings suggests possibilities of absurdism.