Enigmas
Youve asked me what the lobster is weaving there with
his golde?
I reply, the o knows this.
You say, what is the ascidia waiting for in its transparent
bell? What is it waiting for?
I tell you it is waiting for time, like you.
You ask me whom the Macrocystis alga hugs in its arms?
Study, study it, at a certain hour, in a certain sea I know.
You question me about the wicked tusk of the narwhal,
and I reply by describing
how the sea uni with the harpoon in it dies.
You enquire about the kingfishers feathers,
which tremble in the pure springs of the southern tides?
Or youve found in the cards a new question toug on
the crystal architecture
of the sea anemone, and youll deal that to me now?
You want to uand the electriature of the o
spines?
The armored stalactite that breaks as it walks?
The hook of the angler fish, the music stretched out
in the deep places like a thread ier?
I want to tell you the o knows this, that life in its
jewel boxes
is endless as the sand, impossible to t, pure,
and among the blood-crapes time has made the
petal
hard and shiny, made the jellyfish full of light
and us knot, letting its musical threads fall
from a horn of plenty made of infiher-of-pearl.
I am nothing but the empty which has gone on ahead
of human eyes, dead in those darknesses,
of fingers aced to the triangle, longitudes
oimid globe of an e.
I walked around as you do, iigating
the endless star,
and in my , during the night, I woke up naked,
the only thing caught, a fish trapped ihe wind.
Translated by Robert Bly
Pablo Neruda