Home > Work > I Explain a Few Things: Selected Poems
1 " I Ask for Silence"Now they can leave me in peace.Now they grow used to my absence.I am going to close my eyes.I want only five things,five chosen roots.One is an endless love.Two is to see the autumn.I cannot exist without leavesflying and falling to the earth.The third is the solemn winter,the rain I loved, the caressof fire in the rough cold.Fourth, the summer,plump as a watermelon.And fifthly, your eyes,Matilde, my dear love,I won’t sleep without your eyes,I won’t exist without your gaze,I adjust the springfor you to follow me with your eyes.That, friends, is all I want.Next to nothing, close to everything.Now they can go if they wish.I have lived so much that some daythey will have to forget me forcibly,rubbing me off the blackboard.My heart was inexhaustible.But because I ask for silence,don’t think I’m going to die.The opposite is true;it happens I am going to live.To be, and to go on being.I will not be, however, if inside me,the crop does not keep sprouting,the shoots first, breaking through the earthto reach the light;but the mothering earth is dark,and, deep inside me, I am dark.I am a well in the water of whichthe night leaves behind starsand goes on alone across fields.It’s a question of having lived so muchthat I want to live a bit more.I never felt my voice so clear,never have been so rich in kisses.Now, as always, it is early.The light is a swarm of bees.Let me alone with the day.I ask leave to be born. "
― Pablo Neruda , I Explain a Few Things: Selected Poems
2 " Verb"I’m going to wrinkle this word,I’m going to twist it,yes,it is much too flatit is as if a great dog or great riverhad passed its tongue or water over itduring many years.I want that in the wordthe roughness is seenthe iron saltThe de-fanged strengthof the land,the bloodof those who have spoken and those who have not spoken.I want to see the thirstInside the syllablesI want to touch the firein the sound:I want to feel the darknessof the cry. I wantwords as roughas virgin rocks. "