On the Coast

On the Coast by Pablo Neruda (1960)

The poem is a meditation on the speaker's return to their childhood home on the coast of Chile. The speaker reflects on their past, remembering the sea, the wind, and the landscape that shaped their identity. They express a sense of longing and nostalgia for a lost time and place. Through the use of imagery and symbolism, the poem explores themes of identity, memory, and the human connection to nature.

By Pablo Neruda · First published 1960 · Genre: Poetry, Surrealism, Modernism · 78 words

First lines

In Santos, amid the bittersweet smell of plantains that, like a river of soft gold opened in the back, leaves the stupid saliva of unhinged paradise on the shores, and the iron clamor of shadows, water, and locomotive, a current of sweat and feathers, something that descends and flows from the depths of burning leaves as from a pulsing armpit: a crisis of flights, a remote foam.

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On the Coast is listed on Textopian as a poem by Pablo Neruda, dated 1960 CE.

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Poetry · Chilean Literature · Love Poems · Nature Imagery · Coastal Settings · Sea Themes · Melancholy · Longing · Nostalgia · Romanticism · Imagist Style · Free Verse

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