by Pablo Neruda
night
wore away his body. Now he remains.
And a sea plant kisses his wound.
The Shipwrecked
Shipwrecks of stone sang on the coast
and the tower they sang was radiant salt
raising itself drop by drop until it turned into water,
bubble by bubble climbing to the air.
The shipwrecked that oblivion turned to stone
(not an oblivion but all the oblivion),
those that hoped, partly submerged, for
earthly help, voices, shoulders, wine, aspirin,
and only received infernal crabs,
they became the stiff dead ones with granite eyes
and here their statues were scattered,
their formless, round, solitary statues.
Yet they learned to sing. Slowly
the voice of all the shipwrecked rose.
It was a song of salt like a wave,
it was a lighthouse of invisible stones:
parallel stones
looking toward the lightning bolts of oceania
toward the bristling sea,
toward the infinite without boats or countries.
A sun fell, lifting
the green sword of its last light,
another sun fell beneath
from cloud to cloud toward winter,
still another sun
crossed the waves,
savage plumes
that lifted anger and seafoam
over the irritated
walls of turquoise
and there in the huge mass:
parallel sisters,
immobile,
detained
by the rest of the cold,
clustered within its force
like lionesses transformed into rock,
like prows that go on without ocean
in the direction of the time,
the crystalline eternity of the journey.
Solitudes
Among the stones of the coast, walking,
by the shore of Chile,
farther off
sea and sea, moon and sea grass,
the lonely expanse of the planet.
The coast broken
by thunder,
consumed
by the teeth of every dawn,
worn by great stirrings
of weather and waves:
slow birds circle
with iron-colored feathers
and they know the world ends here.
No one said why,
no one exists,
it isn’t written, there are no numbers or letters,
no one trampled the sand, dark
as pollen of lead.
here desolate flowers were born,
plants that expressed themselves with thorns
and sudden blossoms
of furious petals.
No one said there wasn’t any territory,
that here emptiness begins,
the ancient emptiness that guides
with catastrophe, darkness
and shadow, darkness, shadows:
so it is the harsh coast, that road
of south and north and west, and solitude.
Beautiful virtue of that struggle
water and seafoam erect
on this long border:
a structure like a flower-wave
repeating its castle-like form,
its tower that decays and crumbles
only to swell beating anew
pretending
to populate the darkness with its beauty,
fill the abyss with light.
Walking
from the final antarctic
by stone and sea, hardly
saying a word,
only the eyes speak and rest.
Innumerable solitude swept
by wind and salt, by cold,
by chains,
by moon and seaquake:
I must recall the toothless star
that here collapsed,
to gather the fragments
of stone, to hear
no one and speak with no one,
to be and not be a solitary motion:
I am the sentinel
of a barracks without soldiers,
of a great solitude filled with stones.
The Stones of Chile
Mad stones of Chile, pouring
from mountain ranges,
full of rocks
black, blind, opaque,
that joined
roads to the earth,
that placed time and stone
by the day’s journey,
white rocks
that interrupt the rivers
and are kissed
smooth
by a seismic
ribbon of seafoam,
granite
of the glimmering
high seas
beneath
the snow
like a monastery,
backbone
of the
strongest
country
or unmovable
ship,
prow
of the terrible earth,
stone, infinitely pure stone,
sealed
like
a cosmic dove,
stiff from sun, from wind, from energy,
from mineral dream, from dark time,
crazy stones,
stars
and pavilion
slept,
rolling peaks, cliffs:
knew the stillness
around
your lasting silence,
beneath the Antarctic
mantle of Chile,
beneath
your iron clarity.
House
Perhaps this is the house I lived in
when neither I nor earth existed,
when all was moon or stone or darkness,
when still light was unborn.
Perhaps then this stone was
my house, my windows or my eyes.
This rose of granite reminds me
of something that dwelled in me or I in it,
a cave, or cosmic head of dreams,
cup or castle, ship or birth.
I touch the stubborn spirit of rock,
its rampart pounds in the brine,
and my flaws remain here,
wrinkled essence that rose
from the depths to my soul,
and stone I was, stone I will be. Because of this
I touch this stone, and for me it hasn’t died:
it’s what I was, what I will be, resting
from a struggle long as time.
The Blind Statue
It’s been thousands and thousands of
years of stone.
I was a stonecutter
and this is what I did
striking
without hands
or hammer,
piercing
without chisel,
staring into the sun without eyes,
without being,
without existence but in the wind,
with only a wave for my thought,
without tools other
than time,
the time,
the passing time.
I sculpted the statue blind
so that she wouldn’t see,
that there
in the desolate
sand
she would keep her mass
like my monument:
the blind
statue
which the first man
that departed from stone,
the son of power,
the first
that dug, touched and imposed on
its lost creation,
searching for fire.
And I was born, naked
and blue, a stonecutter,
lengthwise from shores in darkness<
br />
from rivers still unknown
in caves lashed by the tails
of somber lizards,
and it was hard to encounter myself,
to become hands,
eyes, fingers, seeking
my own blood,
and then my joy
became a statue:
my own form that I had copied
striking across the centuries in stone.
Ox
Creature of seafoam
traveling
by night, day,
sand.
Animal
of autumn
walking
toward the ancient
scent of moss,
sweet ox
in whose beard
flowered rocks
of the subsoil,
and where the earthquake armed itself
with thunder and footsteps,
ruminating the darkness,
lost
between lighting flashes
while seafoam lives,
while the day
extracts
the hours from its tower
and the night collapses,
over time
her dark cold sack,
trembling.
The Harp
Only the music came. There was no feather, hair,
milk, smoke or names. Neither night nor day.
Alone between the planets born from the eclipse
music trembled like cloth.
Suddenly fire and cold coagulated in a drop
and the universe molded its extensive display,
lava, bristling ashes, slippery dawn,
everything was transformed from hardness to hardness,
and under the dampness newly celestial,
established the diamond with its frozen symmetry.
Then the primal sound,
the solitary music of the world
congealed and fell changing into a star,
a harp, a zither, silence, stone.
Along the Chilean coast, with cold and winter,
when rain falls washing the weeks.
Listen: solitude becomes music once more,
and it seems its appearance is that of air, of rain,
that time, something with wave and wings, passes by,
grows. And the harp awakes from oblivion.
Theater of the Gods
It is like this on the coast.
Suddenly, contorted,
harsh, piled up,
static,
collapsing,
either tenacious theaters,
or ships and corridors
or rolling
severed limbs:
it is like this on the coast,
the rocky lunar slope,
the grapes of granite.
Orange stains
of oxide, green seams,
above the chalky peace,
that the seafoam strikes with its keys
or dawn with its rose
these stones are like this:
no one knows
if they came from the sea or will return to the sea,
something
astonished them
while they lived,
and they faltered in the stillness
and constructed a dead city.
A city without cries,
without kitchens,
a solemn ring
of purity,
tumbling pure shapes
in a confusion without resurrection,
in a crowd that lost its vision,
in a grey monastery condemned
to the naked truth of its gods.
The Lion
A great lion arrived from afar:
it was huge as silence,
it was thirsty, seeking blood,
and behind his investiture,
he had fire like a house,
it burned like a mountain of Osorno.
It found only solitude.
It roared of shyness and hunger:
it could eat only air,
seafoam unpunished by the coast,
frozen sea lettuce,
breeze the color of birds,
unappealing nourishment.
Melancholy lion from another planet
cast up by the high tide
to the small rocky islands of Isla Negra,
the salty archipelago,
with no more than an empty snout,
idle claws
and a tail of ragged feathers.
It felt all the ridicule
of its warlike appearance
and with the passing years
it wrinkled in shame.
Its fear then brought on
the worst arrogance
and it went on growing old like one
of the lions in the plaza,
it transformed into an ornament
for a stone staircase or garden,
until it buried its sad forehead,
fixed its eyes on the rain,
and remained quiet hoping for
the grey justice of stone,
its geologic hour.
I Will Return
Some other time, man or woman, traveler,
later, when I am not alive,
look here, look for me
between stone and ocean,
in the light storming
through the foam.
Look here, look for me,
for here I will return, without saying a thing,
without voice, without mouth, pure,
here I will return to be the churning
of the water, of
its unbroken heart,
here, I will be discovered and lost:
here, I will, perhaps, be stone and silence.
The Great Stone Table
We arrive at the great stone table
the children of Lota, Quepe,
Quitratue and Metrenco.
Of Ranquilco, Selva Oscura,
Yumbel, Yungay and Osorno.
We sit by the table,
the cold table of the world
and no one has brought us anything.
Everything was consumed,
they had eaten all of it.
One plate alone remains,
waiting on the immense hard table
of the world and the void.
Still a child waits
who is the truth of every dream,
who is the hope of our earth.
Where the Thirsty Fell
Hips of stone in the desert.
Here the walker fell
on death.
Here ended the journey
and the traveler.
Everything was sun, everything was thirst and sand.
He couldn’t stand it and became silent.
Then came the next one
and he greeted
the fallen one
with a stone,
with a thirsty stone from the road.
Oh heart of scattered dust,
transformed into desert dust,
traveler and companion heart,
perhaps, of nitrate mines and works,
perhaps of the bitter mining,
you left and took to the road in the sand,
by the desert salt, with the sand.
Now a stone and another
erected here
a monument to the tired hero,
who couldn’t stand it and abandoned his two feet,
then his legs, then his gaze,
life on the road of sand.
Now a stone came,
a harsh memory flew,
a smooth stone arrived,
and the tomb of the man in the desert
is a fist of solidarity in stone.
The Portrait in the Rock
Yes, I knew him, I lived years
with him, with his substance of gold and stone.
He was a man who was worn down.
In Paraguay he left his father and mother,
his sons, his nephews,
his latest in-laws,
his gate, his hens
and some half-opened books.
They called him to the door.
When he opened it, the police took him
and they beat him so much
that he spat blood in France, in Denmark,
in Spain, in Italy, traveling,
and so he died and I stopped seeing his face,
stopped hearing his profound silence.
Then once, on a stormy night,
with snow weaving
a pure coat on the mountains,
a horse, there, in the distance,
I looked and there was my friend:
his face was formed in stone,
his profile defied the wild weather,
in his nose the wind was muffling
the howls of the persecuted.
There the man driven from his land returned:
here in his country, he lives, transformed into stone.
The Ship
We walked and climbed: the world
was a parched noon,
the air didn’t tremble, the leaves didn’t exist,
the water was far away.
The boat or prow then
rose from the deserts
and sailed toward the sky:
a point of stone guided
toward the unbearable infinity,
a closed palace
for the lost gods.
And there was the prow, the arrow, the ship
or dreadful tower,
and for the toiling,
the thirsty, the dusty,
the sweating race
of man that climbed
the difficult hills,
neither water nor bread nor pasture,
only a large rock that rose,
only a stubborn boat of stone and music.
For how long? I cried out, we shouted.
Finally mother earth killed us
with its harsh cactus,
with its ironous maternity,
with all this desert,
sweat, wind and sand,
and when we finally arrived
to rest, wrapped in void,
a boat of stone
still wanted to ship us
toward where, without wings,
we couldn’t fly
without dying.
This we endured when we were tired
and the mountain range was hard,
heavy as a chain.
Only then, my journey ended, here:
beyond, where death began.
The Rugged Ship
Boat of thorns
pierced
like the breast of a man
in a voyage of pain,
banner
that pierced
time
with its struggle
and later
waving in and out, left in the cracks
the chalky winter,
snow,