Ode to the Book
When I close a book
I open life.
I hear
faltering cries
among harbours.
Cnots
slide doits
to Tocopilla.
Night time.
Among the islands
our o
throbs with fish,
touches the feet, the thighs,
the chalk ribs
of my try.
The whole of night
gs to its shores, by dawn
it wakes up singing
as if it had excited a guitar.
The os surge is calling.
The wind
calls me
and Ruez calls,
and Jose Antonio--
I got a telegram
from the "Mine" Union
and the one I love
(whose name I wo out)
expects me in Bucalemu.
No book has been able
to me in paper,
to fill me up
with typography,
with heavenly imprints
or was ever able
to bind my eyes,
I e out of books to people orchards
with the hoarse family of my song,
to work the burnials
or to eat smoked beef
by mountain firesides.
I love adventurous
books,
books of forest or snow,
depth or sky
but hate
the spider book
in which thought
has laid poisonous wires
to trap the juvenile
and cirg fly.
Book, let me go.
I wont go clothed
in volumes,
I dont e out
of collected works,
my poems
have en poems--
they devour
exg happenings,
feed h weather,
and dig their food
out of earth and men.
Im on my way
with dust in my shoes
free of mythology:
send books back to their shelves,
Im going down into the streets.
I learned about life
from life itself,
love I learned in a single kiss
and could teao one anything
except that I have lived
with something in ong men,
when fighting with them,
when saying all their say in my song.
Pablo Neruda