Ode to the bicycle

A version of Pablo Neruda's "Oda a la bicicleta"

Cyclist (1913) by Natalia Goncharova.

Earlier this year I wrote an essay about the Japanese writer Natsume Sōseki’s misadventures with a bicycle during his stay in England (as well as my own mishaps with an e-scooter in Tokyo). In preparation for that piece, I looked into poetry about cycling and came across a whole sub-genre of Victorian poetry celebrating the then-new wonder of travel on two wheels.

Much of it seemed rather gushing and artless, like this:

“My wheel
O magic wheel
Of burnished steel
How part of myself thou art!
As we roll along
‘Mid the hurrying throng
That peoples the busy mart.” ¹

The best poem I came across about bicycles was Neruda’s Oda a la bicicleta. In the end, though, I decided that it would have pulled the essay in another direction, so I didn’t use it.

But I did write a rough translation of the poem, which I include below. You can find the original here.

And if you have any favourite poems about cycling, please share in the comments!

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Ode to the Bicycle

I was walking

along

the crackling

road

the sun was shedding itself grain by grain

like burning maize

and the earth

was

hot,

an infinite circle

with the sky above

blue, deserted.

The bicycles

passed

by me

the only

insects

of that

dry moment

of summer,

stealthy,

swift,

transparent:

they seemed to me

no more than

movements of air.

Workers and girls

setting off

to the factories

giving over

their eyes

to the summer,

heads to the sky,

seated

on the

elytra ²

of the spinning

bicycles

that whistled,

crossing

bridges, rosebushes, bramble

and midday.

I thought of the afternoon when the youngsters

would wash themselves,

sing,

eat,

raise

a glass

of wine

in honour

of love

and of life,

and at the door,

waiting

inert

the bicycle,

because

its only soul was movement

and there on the ground

it is not

a transparent insect

that travels

through the summer,

but simply

a cold

skeleton

that only

redeems

a wandering body

with urgency

and light,

that is to say,

with

the

resurrection

of each day.

1. Tyler, N.P. “My Wheel.” The Wheelman. September, 1883, p. 448. You can read the rest here.

2. An elytron is the “hardened forewing” of a beetle. The word was new to me in English and Spanish. I take it that Neruda is referring to the bicycle’s saddle. As it’s part of the extended insect metaphor, and paraphrasing it would lose the succinctness of the poem, I decided to keep this rather technical word in the English.