Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda was a famous poet and influential politician in Chile. He is considered to be one of the best poets of his time and played a role in the turning point of Changez in the Reluctant Fundamentalist.  Juan-Barista had reached out to Changez and suggested that he visit the house of Pablo Neruda while in Chile. It was at that house that Changez was finally able to come to terms with himself and recognize that he “lacked a stable core, I was not certain where I belonged- in New York, in Lahore, in both, in neither.” (148) I think that this ties in with Pablo Neruda as well, due to the fact that Neruda too traveled all over the world, from Chile to Spain to Paris, and as he had significant posts wherever he went may have faced similar conflict as Changez.  Despite this, I think it was less to do with Pablo Neruda’s accomplishments and standing in society that effected Changez than it was his home and the journey it took to get there. Once he reached the house, Changez was able to reflect on what was going on in his life and
The poem I have selected out of Pablo Neruda’s extensive works was Bird. I found it to be synonymous with Changez’s journey throughout the novel. In the poem, Neruda describes a bird who went on a journey and after the journey he would remain suspended “between sun and geography” observing and learning about what was going on around him. I think that throughout Changez’s journey between America and Pakistan, he learned lessons and made observations that would change his opinions on the world. He became “the small bird on fire” and was ignited with a desire to embrace his culture and eventually pushed to a point where he would scorn what he learned to be negative qualities of America, which he left in order to return to his life in Pakistan.  When Neruda writes of the bird “which dances out of the pollen”, I see a metaphor of Changez who had to emerge from his life in America, filled with confusion, experience; “pollen” in order to come to peace with himself, a peace he achieved hidden away from the rest of the world, left only with his thoughts perched high at Pablo Neruda’s house.

Bird

It passed from one bird to another,
the whole gift of the day.

The day went from flute to flute,
went dressed in vegetation,
in flights which opened a tunnel
through the wind would pass
to where birds were breaking open
the dense blue air -
and there, night came in.

When I returned from so many journeys,
I stayed suspended and green
between sun and geography -
I saw how wings worked,
how perfumes are transmitted
by feathery telegraph,
and from above I saw the path,
the springs and the roof tiles,
the fishermen at their trades,
the trousers of the foam;
I saw it all from my green sky.
I had no more alphabet
than the swallows in their courses,
the tiny, shining water
of the small bird on fire
which dances out of the pollen.