Home > Work > Fully Empowered
1 " We have to discard the pastand, as one buildsfloor by floor, window by window, and the building rises,so do we keep shedding -- first, broken tiles,then proud doors,until, from the past,dust fallsas if it would crashagainst the floor,smoke risesas if it were on fire,and each new daygleams like an emptyplate.There is nothing, there was always nothing.It all has to be filled with a new, expandingfruitfulness;then, down falls yesterdayas in a wellfalls yesterday's water,into the cisternof all that is now without a voice, without fire.It is difficultto get bones used to disappearing, to teach eyesto close, but we do itunwittingly. Everything was alive,alive, alive,alivelike a scarlet fish,but timepassed with cloth and darknessand kept wiping awaythe flash of the fish. Water water water,the past goes on fallingalthough it keeps a grip on thorns and on roots.It went, it went, and nowmemories mean nothing.Now the heavy eyelidshut out the light of the eyeand what was once aliveis now no longer living;what we were, we are not.And with words, although the lettersstill have transparency and sound,they change, and the mouth changes;the same mouth is now another mouth;they change, lips, skin, circulation;another soul took on our skeleton;what once was in us now is not.It left, but if they call, we reply"I am here," and we realize we are not,that what was once, was and is lost,lost in the past, and now does not come back."-"Past "
― Pablo Neruda , Fully Empowered
2 " We will never have any memory of dying.We were so patientabout our being,noting downnumbers, days,years and months,hair, and the mouths we kiss,and that moment of dyingwe let pass without a note -we leave it to others as memory,or we leave it simply to water,to water, to air, to time.Nor do we even keepthe memory of being born,although to come into being was tumultuous and new;and now you don’t remember a single detailand haven’t kept even a traceof your first light.It’s well known that we are born.It’s well known that in the roomor in the woodor in the shelter in the fishermen’s quarteror in the rustling canefieldsthere is a quite unusual silence,a grave and wooden moment asa woman prepares to give birth.It’s well known that we were all born.But if that abrupt translationfrom not being to existing, to having hands,to seeing, to having eyes,to eating and weeping and overflowingand loving and loving and suffering and suffering,of that transition, that quiveringof an electric presence, raising upone body more, like a living cup,and of that woman left empty,the mother who is left there in her bloodand her lacerated fullness,and its end and its beginning, and disordertumbling the pulse, the floor, the coverstill everything comes together and addsone knot more to the thread of life,nothing, nothing remains in your memoryof the savage sea which summoned up a waveand plucked a shrouded apple from the tree.The only thing you remember is your life."-"Births "
3 " Goodbye, goodbye, to one place or another,to every mouth, to every sorrow,to the insolent moon, to weekswhich wound in the days and disappeared,goodbye to this voice and that one stainedwith amaranth, and goodbyeto the usual bed and plate,to the twilit setting of all goddbyes,to the chair that is part of the same twilight,to the way made by my shoes.I spread myself, no question;I turned over whole lives,changed skin, lamps, and hates,it was something I had to do,not by law or whim,more of a chain reaction;each new journey enchained me;I took pleasure in places, in all places.And, newly arrived, I promptly said goodbyewith still newborn tendernessas if the bread were to open and suddenlyflee from the world of the table.So I left behind all languages,repeated goodbyes like an old door,changed cinemas, reasons, and tombs,left everywhere for somewhere else;I went on being, and being alwayshalf undone with joy,a bridegroom among sadnesses,never knowing how or when,ready to return, never returning.It’s well known that he who returns never left,so I traced and retraced my life,changing clothes and planets,growing used to the company,to the great whirl of exile,to the great solitude of bells tolling."-"Goodbyes "
4 " It's hard to tellif we close our eyes or if nightopens in us other starred eyes,if it burrows into the wall of our dreamtill some other door opens.But the dreamis only the flitting costume of one moment,is spent in one beatof the darkness,and falls at our feet, cast offas the day stirs and sails away with us."-from "In the Tower "
5 " for human beings, not to speak is to die"-from "The Word "
6 " The street heaves and winds,burns and bumps,but behind the glassthe locksmith,the old curator of timepieces,stands motionlesswith a single protruding eye,one amazing eyewhich peers into the mystery,the secret hearts of clocks,and looks deeply inuntil the elusive butterflyof time in its measureis trapped in his foreheadand the wings of the watch beat."-from "To Don Asterio Alarcón, Clocksmith of Valparaíso "
7 " I asked of every thingif it hadsomething more,something more than shape and form,and I learned that way that nothing is empty--everything is a box, a train, a boatloaded with implications,every foot that walked along a pathleft a telegram written in the stone,and clothes in the washing waterdripped out their whole existence."-from "Investigations "
8 " Every day, hands are creating the world"-from "In Praise of Ironing "