High sea in 1968: Pacific Ocean

The high sea ransacked

every circle of the beach:

perhaps a dream of the sea,

the dynamite of the abyss:

the truth is there are no words

as hard as the swell,

nor so many teeth in the world

as in marine wrath.

When the sea’s diadem

sets on, and its shields intensify

and towers went up,

when it gallops with the feet

of a billion horses

and the head infuriated

strikes lightning from the stone,

hold on to God, my soul,

says the littlest fisherman

beating his sodden breast

for death without agony.

Clenched sea, bitter turtle,

panoply of assassination,

diapason of war to the death,

piano of carnivorous teeth,

today you knocked down my defenses

with one petal of your fury

and like a crepitating bird

you went singing on the reefs.

Here is the sea, the eyes say,

but you have to wait a lifetime

to see it unto death

and reward a tempest

with four drops of granite.

In Punta del Trueño I strode

gathering salt on my face

and from the ocean, in my mouth

the hurricaned heart:

I saw it explode to the zenith,

bite the sky and spit it out.

In every burst was lobbed

the armament of a war,

every tear in the world

and a train full of lions,

but it still wasn’t enough

and went knocking down what it made

hurling down upon the stone

a rain of chilly statues.

Oh, upended firmament,

o boiling stars of water,

o high sea of rancor,

said I, admiring the loveliness

of the whole sea disordered

in one pitched battle

against my native land jolted

by an inexorable shaking

and the designs of foam.

Pablo Neruda