"I'm Explaining a Few Things" by Pablo Neruda

[@PK-hk7ne]

I am chilled all over and have tears in my eyes.

[@Dorian_sapiens]

The first time I read this poem, it quite literally stunned me: it put me through the wringer like no piece of text had ever done before. It's still haunting every time I revisit it. Thank you for contributing KZbin's first English reading of it, and for the reminder that the wreckage and betrayal of humanity that it depicts don't exclusively belong to Spain's history.

[@deepashtray5605]

The most peaceful stretch in human history yet here we are too numb or too distracted to pay any attention to this fucking war.

[@bijisureshbabu324]

I'M EXPLAINING A FEW THINGS You are going to ask: and where are the lilacs? and the poppy-petalled metaphysics ? and the rain repeatedly spattering its words and drilling them full of apertures and birds?' I’ll tell you all the news. I lived in a suburb, a suburb of Madrid, with bells, and clocks and trees. From there you could look out Over Castille’s dry face: a leather ocean. My house was called the house of flowers, because in every cranny geraniums burst: it was a good-looking house with its dogs and children. Remember, Raúl? Eh, Rafael? Federico, do you remember from under the ground where the light of June drowned flowers in your mouth? Brother, my brother! Everything loud with big voices, the salt of merchandises, pile-ups of palpitating bread, the stalls of my suburb of Argüelles with its statue Like a drained inkwell in a swirl of hake: oil flowed into spoons, a deep baying of feet and hands swelled in the streets, metres, litres, the sharp measure of life, stacked-up fish, the texture of roofs with a cold sun in which the weather vane falters, the fine, frenzied ivory of potatoes, wave on wave of tomatoes rolling down to the sea. And one morning all that was burning, one morning the bonfires leapt out of the earth devouring human beings - and from then on fire, gunpowder from then on, and from then on blood. Bandits with planes and Moors, Bandits with finger-rings and duchesses, Bandits with black friars spattering blessings came through the sky to kill children and the blood of children ran through the streets without fuss, like children's blood. Jackals that the jackals would despise, stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out, vipers that the vipers would abominate! Face to face with you I have seen the blood of Spain tower like a tide to drown you in one wave of pride and knives! Treacherous generals: see my dead house, look at broken Spain: from every house burning metal flows instead of flowers, from every socket of Spain Spain emerges and from every dead child a rifle with eyes, and from every crime bullets are bom which will one day find the bull's eye of your hearts. And you will ask: why doesn’t his poetry speak of dreams and leaves and the great volcanoes of his native land? Come and see the blood in the streets. Come and see the blood in the streets. Come and see the blood in the streets!

[@comradesteve1990]

This is very powerful

[@SisyphusRedeemed]

Thank you. That's what I was aiming for.

[@JWbrasser]

Good to see you are uploading again...

[@AtheistCitizen]

super choice. didnt expect such impact.

[@bonnie43uk]

Very powerful, beautifully read SR.

[@DeconvertedMan]

really powerful -- please do those that walk away from omelas

[@seanhockly6755]

Great poem, well read and well done, thank you.

[@gnanasiripiyathilaka1212]

Why do not going to change this brutal system? I'm crying.

[@Everfrost1000]

Great video, this poem is very fitting to describe the Syrian war.

[@Everfrost1000]

This is the first time that I've heard this poem. The end hits very hard. What war is the poem originally about?

[@SisyphusRedeemed]

The Spanish Civil war, 1936. Neruda lived through it and it scared him deeply.

[@BigMTBrain]

Scared and scarred, I'm sure. The poem... so very appropriate... and sadly so. The excellent image montage tells the modern tale... and reveals that human to human brutality knows no end.

[@colinellesmere]

Well done. Very good reading. That hits home and makes its point. This poem can be read in several ways. Absolutely nothing wrong with your rendition. Thhe ending is a call for action.

[@strangetranceoffaith]

Amazing

[@shariq1988]

Very emotional nd sad poem

[@TheLacedaemonian300]

SisyphusRedeemed Where have you been? We need your wisdom now more than ever. Make some fucking videos man.

[@SisyphusRedeemed]

Thanks Lacedaemonian. I've made a video here and there over the last year or so. I hope to get back into the habit of making more.

[@TheLacedaemonian300]

I really hope that you make some videos again soon. You had a great impact on me and my thinking, personally. There are videos of yours that I've watched over and over again. People like you don't realize just how much of an impact you have on people like me. It would be great to see you out there and available again. You are one of the rare ones.

[@SisyphusRedeemed]

TheLacedaemonian300 Wow, that's an incredible thing to say. Thank you very much for that. It does help motivate me to make more videos.

[@TheLacedaemonian300]

I've watched "You have no idea how wrong you are" many more times than I would be comfortable admitting. And, "We all preach the end of the world" is another great one.. Just glad I've been able to catch you in one of those rare moments where I'm online at the same time that you reading your messages, so that I can tell you personally tell how much I appreciate what you have done, and hope that you continue on. It was great to see you post a video. Cheers, and here's to hoping that you keep on going, and know that there are people out there like myself of whom you have impacted greatly in ways of thinking and of looking at the world.

[@TheLacedaemonian300]

One last thing, I held so much hope for your series "Badasses of History", they were so good, and I always wanted to send you possible figures to cover. Since this is one of those rare opportunities, can I suggest, if you ever do another one, do it on Epaminondas of Thebes. The internet needs a video dedicated to him and his greatness. And to me he is the ultimate when it comes to badasses in history. You are the perfect person to take on the task. I apologize for going a bit overboard in taking advantage of this time to communicate with you, but I figured, I have this one chance, I'll use it to the fullest! Epaminondas was a great man. If he would have lived and conquered instead of Alexander the Great, I think that we would be living in a far better world today. Would love to know what you think.

[@JXZX1]

This was a beautiful and evocative poem... But I feel, in some ways, that it is self-defeating. Perhaps the poem intended to contrast the idyllic dream of past peace with the brutal, disillusioning reality of destruction and decay to suggest to us that we should readjust our demands in response to a new setting. I took from the poem that the rivers of blood and the metallic ruins of dead life are just as beautiful and amazing because it is lurid. Might be due to my own perspective on life, but I think the distinction between horror and the sublime is vague. This is not to say I endorse what happened in the Civil Wars of Spain and Syria. My first instinct is just to marvel at the intensity and hopelessness. I'll have to consider what my response to this poem says about me.

[@iluan_]

That's an interesting interpretation, however I kinda disagree. This is a little meta, but I think this poem it's more of a personal explanation about the changes in his poetry. Let me explain, this poem was part of the third book in a series called "Residence on earth". The first two books were published right before the war, and the last one right after. In the first two books his poetry is very abstract and symbolic, dealing mainly with themes of nature, love, nostalgia, and the like. But in the third book his writing style becomes way less symbolic and everything is about Spain. I think this particular poem was directed towards the readers of the first two books.

[@fideluna]

i dont know if Neruda would have included ISIS with ASSAD when one was the Jewish state creation and the other, their enemy

[@TheBlidget]

very good video.

[@zahoorganie4138]

Sea of leather meaning please

[@PK-hk7ne]

Zahoor Ganie The area is a dry land. It’s not referring to an actual sea.

[@linovarghese7164]

Was the last two pictures were real of the blood all over the road?

[@SisyphusRedeemed]

I am not sure, but I believe so.

[@tufailtahir7931]

please explain sea of leather

[@marcdunord]

dry, arid area (in the summer)

[@kagayaku97]

👍👍👍👍👍👍

[@paineoftheworld]

1935. 201... whatever. It'll never end. Will it?

[@mgssociety5400]

gud job👍😀

[@dilly7551]

I see Putin and Assad but no Obama...

[@IblameBlame]

Or al Saud, al Thani or Erdogan.

[@jackdaniel778]

Beautiful poem but Neruda is from Chile not Spain.

[@SisyphusRedeemed]

He was born in Chile, but lived for several years in Spain. He had a diplomatic post at the Chilean consulate in Madrid, before the war.

[@jackdaniel778]

+SisyphusRedeemed My objection is to calling Meruda Spanish poet.

[@SisyphusRedeemed]

Ah, I see, yes. Corrected.

[@anxiousandworrying1]

... you know Neruda would have probably sided with the SAA right?

[@marcdunord]

shame on whoever was who decided to sully this marvelous poem against clerico-fascism, fascism, and nazism written by a noble communist chilean poet, by mixing it with obscenely and mendaciously goebbelsian images that further western imperialism. The syrian tragedy was initiated by outside powers and was usa embassy-orchestrated (see wikileaks cables), exactly like the toppling of the spanish republic was carried out by armed thugs sent there by fascist italy and nazi germany (whence the legitimacy of franco's and rajoy's spain in NATO). Revolting to see here putin and assad, who opposed this n-th rape by the west of a third-world country non-subservient to it, being made responsible the syrian civil war, which was planned, triggered, and steered by the great-western plutocracies, the great-gulf democracies, and israel.

[@Tespri]

Nice poem. But to provide some objective view in here. Children die all the time around the world and wars has constantly existed. What makes Syrian civil war any different from them? And on what ground civil war or war overall is always wrong? Bystanders will obviously get hurt by it by to time, but were not living in perfect world. Sometimes even more people would get hurt if war never happened. You cannot reason with psychopaths who have all the power, only thing they listen is might. Worst of all. I know fully well that most people who talk about Syria and claim how much they want to help them. Don't actually give a fuck about them. It's near impossible for a human to have feelings for someone who they have never met, if they would then they would be crying constantly over people dying all the time around the world. These people are simply virtue signaling to others and try to make themselves look like morally superior to others. Nothing but pretenders and vultures.

[@SisyphusRedeemed]

It's true that children die all the time, but they die in war at a much higher rate. Some wars are worse than others in this regard; international law and canons of just war theory place huge restrictions on things like targeting noncombatants, for example. Civil wars in general are worse than traditional wars, in this regard, because the battle-lines are drawn right through population centers. 'Enemy lines' are not out in some distant battlefield, where soldiers can general avoid killing noncombatants, and focus on killing other soldiers. By the time the army reaches your main population centers in conventional wars, the war is usually already lost. Part of what makes the Syrian civil war so terrible, even by civil war standards, is that those laws and canons have been largely ignored. ISIL has shown no limit to the horrors they are willing to commit to achieve their goals, and al-Assad has likewise been unspeakably barbaric in his tactics. Both have shown no compunction about targeting civilians, including children. And those are just two of about a half-dozen different factions vying for power. Whether or not war is ever justified is a hard question, but it's not the one I intended to bring up with this video. I'm not even saying that THIS war is unjustified. I'm simply trying to get people to pay more attention to it. Perhaps you are right that most people don't give a shit about strangers dying on the other side of the globe. But I want to do what little I can to change that.

[@TheMaxVader]

I think even if most people were not only fully aware of this conflict but also agreed that something ought to be done, it unfortunately wouldn't make the main question any easier: What precisely should be done? Leaving aside all the political and ethical questions about intervening in other countries and in what way you intervene and all that, there's going to be fundamental disagreements even with just how to help the civilians. Do you send troops or just do airstrikes? Do you occupy the country temporarily or try to help it transition into a new, more democratic regime immediately? Or is there already an existing faction that you can in good conscience support? Is a democratic government even feasible in such a country? How do you fix the problem of ISIS and it's underlying causes? And of course, do you accept refugees, and if so, how many and which ones?

[@SisyphusRedeemed]

Yeah, the poem doesn't suggest a resolution to the Spanish Civil war, anymore than the video suggests a resolution to the Syrian. It is a horribly complicated situation. I can't claim to have a clear answer to the questions you pose. But the clearest one to my mind is about the refugees: Yes, you accept them. And as many of them as you can. But that is a topic for another video.

[@TheMaxVader]

Indeed. Regarding the refugees though, I will have to disagree. We tried what you suggested, it's a disaster.

[@SisyphusRedeemed]

Yeah, it's bad. But it's not 50,000 dead children bad. But like I say, a topic for another day.

[@beepbopboop1303]

I like your use of the fake photo staged by CNN of the little boy in the ambulance

[@SisyphusRedeemed]

Yeah, right, that's totally just make up. There never was a bombing, no kids have ever died. You can sleep tight tonight.