Two Poems After Neruda
by Ned Denny
i) Ocean Body lovelier than waves salt laving the sea-line and the bird whose feathers shine heedless of all my graves ii) The Sea No blood yet one single being ; death or a rose, a sole caress; the sea comes in to shape our ways, grows branches, strikes alone, can sing through man and creature, nights and days. Its essence: fire, cold. Restlessness.
Ventriloquise (Carcanet Poetry, 2023)
Ned Denny’s two poems feel like someone standing at the edge of the sea at dusk, letting memory, desire, and the body dissolve into the tide. Ocean reads like a confession whispered to a beloved whose presence is as fluid and untamable as water itself a body shaped by salt, light, and longing. The bird that glints above, indifferent to “all my graves,” carries a quiet ache: beauty keeps moving even when we are weighed down by our own ruins. In The Sea, the line “No blood yet one single being” feels like a hand pressing gently against the sternum, reminding us that we and the world are made of the same trembling matter. The sea becomes a restless companion, shaping us the way grief or love shapes us slowly, insistently, without asking. Its contradictions — fire and cold, death and rose echo the contradictions inside every human life. These poems don’t simply describe the sea; they let it seep into the reader, stirring something ancient and unsettled. What remains is a sense of being held by a force larger than ourselves, something that moves through us with the same restlessness we carry within.
The juxtaposition is thought-provoking and rather stark. Neither figure seems that great, to be honest.