Is it not strange that all great poets and writers were leftist of sorts? Neruda's friend was Allende, the President of Chile, who was later replaced by the American sponsored dictator Pinochet. Neruda was deeply effected by that. Neruda and Faiz Ahmed Faiz I believe both received the Lenin Prize (the Communist world's equivalent of the Nobel Prize) at the same time. Faiz was probably more leftist in his poetry though. In any case, I don't think one can divorce the person's sensitiveness to the social disequilibrium, the intolerance between nations, within faiths etc and the poetry of the legends.