Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) was famously called 'the Picasso of poetry' for his prodigious body of work and his constant search for fresh representations. Born Neftal? Ricardo Reyes Basoalto in central Chile, he adopted the pen name of Pablo Neruda, in memory of the Czechoslovak poet Jan Neruda (1834-1891), when he began contributing to Selva Austral, a literary journal. Neruda was a Chilean diplomat who held posts in Europe and various Asian countries including Burma and Ceylon. A staunch communist, Neruda's faith was not shaken, even in exile from Chile, except when he heard of Stalin's pogroms.

Although he may be most strongly remembered in the popular imagination for his romantic poetry, Neruda is much more than just a poet of love. His oeuvre was varied and plentiful-from the yearning cosmic love poetry of Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair to the visceral and politically charged Residence on Earth or the delectably simple Elemental Odes-he was a poet of constant self-awareness and redefinition.

On the 30th anniversary of his death, Nepali Times finds that Pablo Neruda's poetry strikes a chord in present-day Nepal as much as it did in Spain when he wrote "I Explain a Few Things" after his experiences in the Spanish Civil War.

I Explain a Few Things
You will ask: But where are the lilacs?
And the metaphysics covered with poppies?
And the rain that often struck
his words, filling them
with holes and birds?

Let me tell you what's happening with me.

I lived in a barrio of Madrid, with bells,
with clocks, with trees.

From there you could see
the parched face of Castile
like an ocean of leather.
My house was called
the house of flowers, because from everywhere
geraniums burst: it was
a beautiful house,
with dogs and children.

Raul, do you remember?
Do you remember, Rafael?
Federico, do you remember
under the ground,
do you remember my house with balconies
where the June light drowned the flowers in your mouth?
Brother, brother!
Everything
was loud voices, salt of goods,
crowds of pulsating bread,
marketplaces in my barrio of Arguelles with its statue
like a pale inkwell set down among the hake:

oil flowed into spoons,
a deep throbbing
of feet and hands filled the streets,
meters, liters, the hard
edges of life,
heaps of fish,
geometry of roof under a cold sun in which
the weathervane grew tired,
delirious fine ivory of potatoes,
tomatoes, more tomatoes, all the way to the sea.

And one morning it all was burning,
and one morning bonfires
sprang out of the earth
devouring humans,
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.

Bandidos with planes and Moors,
bandidos with rings, and duchesses,
bandidos with black friars signing the cross
coming down from the sky to kill children,
and in the streets the blood of the children
ran simple, like blood of children.

Jackals the jackals would despise,
stones the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers the vipers would abominate.

Facing you I have seen the blood
of Spain rise up
to drown you in a single wave
of pride and knives.

Traitors,
generals:
look at my dead house,
look at Spain broken:
from every house burning metal comes out
instead of flowers,
from every crater of Spain
comes Spain
from every dead child comes a rifle with eyes,
from every crime bullets are born
that one day will find out in you
the site of the heart.

You will ask: why doesn't his poetry
speak to us of dreams, of leaves
of 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!