wk-1-d-2-The Poet-Pablo Neruda

The Poet

In the old days I went through life

in the grip of a tragic love and cherishing

a little leaflet of quartz

and I nailed life down with my eyes.

I shopped for generosity, walked

in the market of greed, inhaled

the most secret fumes of envy , the inhuman

hostility of masks and men.

I lived a world of everglades

where the sudden flower, the madonna lily

devoured me in her shivering foam

and wherever I set my foot my soul sideslipped

into the jaws of death.

This is the way my poetry was born-no sooner than

redeemed from nettles, won

out of solitude like a punishment,

or how it set apart its most mysterious flower

in the brazen garden, as if to bury it.

Locked out this way like the dark waters 

that lived in deep channels

I ran this way and that seeking the solitude

of every being, the daily hatefulness.

I knew that they thrived by drowning

half human like fish

in the most foreign seas, and in the hugeness of the

vasty deep I met with death.

Death opening doors and paths.

Death slithering over walls.