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Pablo Neruda

Triangles

Three triangles of birds crossed 

Over the enormous ocean which extended 

In winter like a green beast. 

Everything just lay there, the silence, 

The unfolding gray, the heavy light 

Of space, some land now and then. 

Over everything there was passing 

A flight 

And another flight 

Of dark birds, winter bodies 

Trembling triangles 

Whose wings, 

Frantically flapping, hardly 

Can carry the gray cold, the desolate days 

From one place to another 

Along the coast of Chile. 

I am here while from one sky to another 

The trembling of the migratory birds 

Leaves me sunk inside myself, inside my own matter 

Like an everlasting well 

Dug by an immovable spiral. 

Now they have disappeared 

Black feathers of the sea 

Iron birds 

From steep slopes and rock piles 

Now at noon 

I am in front of emptiness. It’s a winter 

Space stretched out 

And the sea has put 

Over its blue face 

A bitter mask. 

Water

Everything on the earth bristled, the bramble

pricked and the green thread

nibbled away, the petal fell, falling

until the only flower was the falling itself.

Water is another matter,

has no direction but its own bright grace,

runs through all imaginable colors,

takes limpid lessons

from stone,

and in those functionings plays out

the unrealized ambitions of the foam.