Sunday, April 12, 2009

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.

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