Neruda

My Aunt and Uncle just returned from Chile, where they visited Pablo Neruda's nautical themed home in Valparaiso. They said it was quite the experience, reflecting aspects of a ship in every room. My uncle told me that in fact Neruda was not a sailor, and was in fact deathly afraid of the water. I find this compelling based upon the imagery in so many of his poems is based on waves, water, and cyclical gravitation...oh the irony of fear and desire.

At any rate, a poem on a Sunday.

Love by Pablo Neruda

What's wrong with you, with us,
what's happening to us?
Ah our love is a harsh cord
that binds us wounding us
and if we want
to leave our wound,
to separate,
it makes a new knot for us and condemns us
to drain our blood and burn together.

What's wrong with you? I look at you
and I find nothing in you but two eyes
like all eyes, a mouth
lost among a thousand mouths that I have kissed, more beautiful,
a body just like those that have slipped
beneath my body without leaving any memory.

And how empty you went through the world
like a wheat-colored jar
without air, without sound, without substance!
I vainly sought in you
depth for my arms
that dig, without cease, beneath the earth:
beneath your skin, beneath your eyes,
nothing,
beneath your double breast scarcely
raised
a current of crystalline order
that does not know why it flows singing.
Why, why, why,
my love, why?