Neruda: Sixty Selected Poems

I rise, to tread the grass,
enter poetry,
consider through the windows,
the things,
the men, the women,
the deeds and the fights
go on forming me,
go on making me face things
working my hands,
opening my eyes

All will be gone, you will live on,

You ignite life.

You made what is yours

I was always a little less knowing
and so little was my knowledge
that I learned wisdom.

Oh Earth, wait for me

When I go to sleep each night
what am I called, not called?
And when I wake up, who am I
if it wasn’t ‘I’ who was sleeping?
This is to say that as soon as we
are thrust out into life,
that we come newly born,
that our mouths are not filled
with all these dubious names,
with all these mournful labels,
with all these meaningless letters,
with all this ‘yours’ and ‘mine’,
with all this signing of papers.

I think to confound things
mingling them, hatching them new,
seeing through them, stripping them naked,
until the light of the earth
has the unity of the ocean,
a generous integrity,
a crackle of starched perfume.

It so happens I’m tired of being a man.

because of love, you will, I will,
We will, come to be.

Perhaps not to be is to be without your being.’

I don’t love her, that’s certain, but perhaps I love her.

Under your skin the moon is alive.