Nothing But Death
There are cemeteries that are lonely,
graves full of bohat do not make a sound,
the heart moving through a tunnel,
in it darkness, darkness, darkness,
like a shipwreck we die going into ourselves,
as though we were drowning inside our hearts,
as though we lived falling out of the skin into the soul.
And there are corpses,
feet made of cold and sticky clay,
death is ihe bones,
like a barking where there are no dogs,
ing out from bells somewhere, from graves somewhere,
growing in the damp air like tears of rain.
Sometimes I see alone
coffins under sail,
embarking with the pale dead, with women that have dead hair,
with bakers who are as white as angels,
and pensive young girls married to notary publics,
caskets sailing up the vertical river of the dead,
the river of dark purple,
moving upstream with sails filled out by the sound of death,
filled by the sound of death which is silence.
Death arrives among all that sound
like a shoe with no foot in it, like a suit with no man in it,
es and knocks, using a ring with no stone in it, with no
finger in it,
es and shouts with no mouth, with no tongue, with no
throat.
heless its steps be heard
and its clothing makes a hushed sound, like a tree.
Im not sure, I uand only a little, I hardly see,
but it seems to me that its singing has the color of damp violets,
of violets that are at home in the earth,
because the face of death is green,
and the look death gives is green,
with the peing dampness of a violet leaf
and the somber color of embittered winter.
But death also goes through the world dressed as a broom,
lapping the floor, looking for dead bodies,
death is ihe broom,
the broom is the tongue of death looking for corpses,
it is the needle of death looking for thread.
Death is ihe folding cots:
it spends its life sleeping on the slow mattresses,
in the black blas, and suddenly breathes out:
it blows out a mournful sound that swells the sheets,
and the beds go sailing toward a port
where death is waiting, dressed like an admiral.
Translated by Robert Bly
Pablo Neruda