John Kerry's Favorite Poet

From Pablo Neruda's funerary ode to Stalin:

To be men! That is the Stalinist law!
…We must learn from Stalin
his sincere intensity
his concrete clarity
…Stalin is the noon,
the maturity of man and the peoples.
Stalinists, Let us bear this title with pride.
…Stalinist workers, clerks, women
take care of this day!
The light has not vanished.
The fire has not disappeared,
There is only the growth of
Light, bread, fire and hope
In Stalin’s invincible time!
…In recent years the dove,
Peace, the wandering persecuted rose,
Found herself on his shoulders
And Stalin, the giant,
Carried at the heights of his forehead.
…A wave beats against the stones of the shore.
But Malenkov will continue his work.

This lyrical gem is usually -- gasp! -- omitted from collections of Neruda's work.

Roger Kimball, interviewed in National Review Online, had this to say about Kerry's admiration for Neruda:

I find it entirely appropriate that someone of John Kerry's principles should claim to favor the poetry of a Stalinist apparatchik. Whether Mr. Kerry actually knows any of Neruda's poetry is another question. Neruda is what Stephen Potter (the author of One-upmanship and other masterpieces of social satire) would have described as an "OK author": exactly the sort of poet who appeals to the Birkenstock-wearing, Kumbaya-singing, anti-capitalist beneficiaries of capitalism that Mr. Kerry is counting on to help him move into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue next year.