It's that dying time of year
Neruda Gems
... from 'It Means Shadows'
Let me, then, be what I am, wherever and in whatever weather,
rooted and certain and ardent witness,
carefully, unstoppably, destroying and saving himself,
openly engaged in his original obligation.
... from 'Only Death'
I don't know, I understand so little, I can hardly see
but I believe that death's song is the color of wet violets,
violets accustomed to the earth,
because the face of death is green,
and the gaze of death is green
with the sharp wetness of the leaf of a violet
and its serious color of wintry impatience.
Oneness
There's something dense, united, sitting in the background,
repeating its number, its identical signal.
How clear it is that stones have handled time,
in their fine substance there's the smell of age,
and water the sea brings, salty and sleepy.
Just one thing surrounds me, a single motion:
the weight of rocks, the light of honey,
fasten themselves to the sound of the word night:
the tones of wheat, of ivory, of tears,
aging, fading, blurring,
come together around me like a wall.
I toil deafly, circling above my self,
like a raven above death, grief's raven.
I'm thinking, isolated in the depths of the seasons,
dead center, surrounded by silent geography:
a piece of weather falls from the sky,
an extreme empire of confused unities
converges, encircling me.