Always to be born

The sun is born of its seed

to its obligatory splendor,

laves with light the universe,

lies down to die each day

beneath the dark sheets

of the germinating night

and so as to be born again

leaves its egg in the dew.

I ask that my resurrection

also be reproductive,

be solar and delicate,

but I need to sleep

in the sheets of the moon

procreating modestly

my own terrestrial substances.

I want to extend me in the void

disinterested of wind

and propagate me without let

on the forty continents,

to be born in forms anterior,

to be camel, to be quail,

to be belltower in motion,

leaf of water, drop of tree,

spider, whale in the sky

or stormy novelist.

Yes I know that my immobility

is the invisible guarantee

of the whole establishment:

if we change our zoology

we are not admitted to heaven.

That’s why seated on my rock

I see whirling over my dreams

helicopters that turn

from their diminutive stars

and I don’t need to count them,

there are always a few too many,

above all in spring.

And if I go upon the ways

I come again to the forgotten scent

of an uninhabited rose,

of a fragrance that I lost

as shadows are mislaid:

I stood without that love

naked in the middle of the street.

Pablo Neruda