I am grateful to the earth

by Pablo Neruda, from the poem This Is Where We Live*

I am grateful to the earth
for having waited
for me
when sky and sea came together
like two lips touching;
for that's no small thing, no?--
to have lived
through one solitude to arrive at another,
to feel oneself many things and recover wholeness.

I love all the things there are,
and of all fires
love is the only inexhaustible one;
and that's why I go from life to life,
from guitar to guitar,
and I have no fear
of light or shade,
and almost being earth myself,
I spoon away at infinity.

Perfect, perfect, perfect.

* Stavans, Ilan, ed. 2003. The Poetry of Pablo Neruda, 480-481, NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.