Near the knives

This is the smooth soul I hoped for,

this is the soul of today, motionless,

as if it were made of moon

without air, quiet in its terrible kindness.

When a stone falls

like a fist

from the night sky

in this cup I will receive it:

in the brimming light

I will receive the traveling darkness,

the celestial incertitude.

I’ll steal naught but this motion

of grass in the sky,

of fertile night:

only a blow of fire,

a fall.

Deliver me, dark earth, from my keys:

if I opened and curbed

and again shut the hard sky,

I give testimony that I am not anyone,

that I am not anything,

that I am not.

Only a star I hoped,

the moon’s dart,

the ray of celestial stone,

I hoped immobile in the society

of the grass that grows in Spring,

of the milk in the udder,

of the honey shiftless and shifting:

I hoped for hope,

and here I am

convicted

of having compacted with the tempest,

of having accepted wrath,

of having opened my soul,

of having heard the assassin come in,

while I conversed in the night.

Here comes another one, said the dog barking.

And I with my eyes of cold,

with the silvered mourning

which the firmament gave me,

I saw neither dagger nor dog,

I did not hear the barking.

And here I am when seeds are born

and open like lips:

all is fresh and profound.

I am dead,

I am assassinated:

I am being born

with Spring.

Here I have a leaf,

an ear, a whisper,

a thought:

I am going to live again,

I ache to the roots,

the hair,

my mouth smiles at me:

I rise because the sun has exited.

Because the sun has exited.

Pablo Neruda