Fable of the Mermaid and the Drunks
All those mehere inside,
when she came in totally naked.
They had been drinking: they began to spit.
Newly e from the river, she knew nothing.
She was a mermaid who had lost her way.
The insults flowed down her gleaming flesh.
Obsities drowned her goldes.
Not knowing tears, she did not weep tears.
Not knowing clothes, she did not have clothes.
They blaed her with burnt corks and cigarette stubs,
and rolled around laughing oavern floor.
She did not speak because she had no speech.
Her eyes were the colour of distant love,
her twin arms were made of white topaz.
Her lips moved, silent, in a coral light,
and suddenly she went out by that door.
Entering the river she was ed,
shining like a white stone in the rain,
and without looking back she swam again
swam towards emptiness, swam towards death.
Pablo Neruda