Walking Around
It so happens I am sick of being a man.
And it happens that I walk into tailorshops and movie
houses
dried up, roof, like a swan made of felt
steering my way in a water of wombs and ashes.
The smell of barbershops makes me break into hoarse
sobs.
The only thing I want is to lie still like stones or wool.
The only thing I want is to see no more stores, no gardens,
noods, no spectacles, no elevators.
It so happens that I am siy feet and my nails
and my hair and my shadow.
It so happens I am sick of being a man.
Still it would be marvelous
to terrify a law clerk with a cut lily,
or kill a nun with a blow on the ear.
It would be great
to gh the streets with a green knife
letting out yells until I died of the cold.
I dont want to go on being a root in the dark,
insecure, stretched out, shivering with sleep,
going on down, into the moist guts of the earth,
taking in and thinkiing every day.
I dont want so much misery.
I dont want to go on as a root and a tomb,
alone uhe ground, a warehouse with corpses,
half frozen, dying of grief.
Thats why Monday, when it sees me ing
with my vict face, blazes up like gasoline,
and it howls on its way like a wounded wheel,
and leaves tracks full of warm blood leading toward the
night.
And it pushes me into certain ers, into some moist
houses,
into hospitals where the bones fly out the window,
into shoeshops that smell like vinegar,
aain streets hideous as cracks in the skin.
There are sulphur-colored birds, and hideous iines
hanging over the doors of houses that I hate,
and there are false teeth fotten in a coffeepot,
there are mirrors
that ought to have wept from shame and terror,
there are umbrellas everywhere, and venoms, and umbilical
cords.
I stroll along serenely, with my eyes, my shoes,
my rage, fetting everything,
I walk by, going through office buildings and orthopedic
shops,
and courtyards with washing hanging from the line:
underwear, towels and shirts from which slow
dirty tears are falling.
Translated by Robert Bly
Pablo Neruda