Mondays are meshed with Tuesdays and the whole week with the whole year. Time cannot be cut with your exhausted scissors, and all the names of the day are washed out by the waters of night. No one can claim the name of Pedro, nobody is Rosa or Maria, all of us are dust or sand, all of us are rain under rain. They have spoken to me of Venezuelas, of Chiles and Paraguays; I have no idea what they are saying. I know only the skin of the earth and I know it has no name. When I lived amongst the roots they pleased me more than flowers did, and when I spoke to a stone it rang like a bell. It is so long, the spring which goes on all winter. Time lost its shoes. A year lasts four centuries. When I sleep every night, what am I called or not called? And when I wake, who am I if I was not I while I slept? This means to say that scarcely have we landed into this life than we come as if new-born; let us not fill our mouths with so many faltering names, with so many sad formalities, with so many pompous letters, with so much of yours and mine, with so much signing of papers. I have a mind to confuse things, unite them, make them new-born, mix them up, undress them, until all light in the world has the oneness of the ocean, a generous, vast wholeness, a crackling, living fragrance.
This poem was translated by Alastair Reid.
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I went to Isla Negra on the coast of Chile where Pablo Neruda lived for a while. The Pacific Ocean crashes into the land there with full force, waves explode so loud that all the thoughts and names in my mind scattered and i could hear the silence behind the sea. Neruda's poem reminds me of that, that experience is what he is talking about. no thoughts and words, just pure energy.
"When I lived amongst the roots
they pleased me more than flowers did [...]"
a praise of underground poetry.