Pablo Neruda: Residence on Earth

There Is No Oblivion (Sonata)

If you ask me where I have been
I must say "It so happens."
I must speak of the ground darkened by the stones,
of the river that enduring is destroyed:
I know only the things that the birds lose,
the sea left behind, or my sister weeping.
Why so many regions, why does a day
join a day? Why does a black night
gather in the mouth? Why dead people?

If you ask me where I come from, I have to converse with
broken things,
with utensils bitter to excess,
with great beasts frequently rotted
and with my anguished heart.

Those that have crossed paths are not memories
nor is the yellowish dove that sleeps in oblivion,
they are tearful faces
fingers at the throat,
and what falls down from the leaves:
the darkness of a day gone by,
of a day nourished with our sad blood.

Here are violets, swallows,
everything that pleases us and that appears
in the sweet long-trained cards
around which stroll time and sweetness.

But let us not penetrate beyond those teeth,
let us not bite the shells that silence gathers,
because I do not know what to answer:
there are so many dead,
so many sea walls that the red sun split,
and so many heads that beat against the ships,
and so many hands that have cradled kisses,
and so many things that I want to forget.