POEM OF THE DAY -- "The Dictators" by Pablo Neruda

I love to feature Pablo Neruda's famous love poems in our Poem of the Day series.  On those days, I sit and I pore through and consider dozens of what I believe are some of the most beautiful love poems, ever.  As we broadcast these love poems over Twitter...I look forward to the energy these tweets generate in re-tweets and comments.  Others love a good Neruda love poem, too.

But Neruda didn't just write love poems.  Active and outpoken in politics in his beloved homeland of Chile, Neruda could be very political and cynical and social.  He frequently found himself in danger for this cynicism, especially when it was published.

Here's a good one that as Americans we probably have a difficult time relating to, but if you're Chilean, well...thank god those days have passed.

Enjoy! 

The Dictators  

 by Pablo Neruda

An odor has remained among the sugarcane:
a mixture of blood and body, a penetrating
petal that brings nausea.
Between the coconut palms the graves are full
of ruined bones, of speechless death-rattles.
The delicate dictator is talking
with top hats, gold braid, and collars.
The tiny palace gleams like a watch
and the rapid laughs with gloves on
cross the corridors at times
and join the dead voices
and the blue mouths freshly buried.
The weeping cannot be seen, like a plant
whose seeds fall endlessly on the earth,
whose large blind leaves grow even without light.
Hatred has grown scale on scale,
blow on blow, in the ghastly water of the swamp,
with a snout full of ooze and silence 

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