Walking Around
by Pablo Neruda
As it happens, I am tired of being a man.
As it happens, I go to the tailor and to the cinema
shriveled, impervious, like a swan made of felt
flowing on the waters of origin and ash.
The smell of the barber shop makes me sob.
I want a break from stone and wool.
I want to stop seeing institutions and gardens,
commodities, eyeglasses, elevators.
As it happens, I am tired of my feet and my nails,
my hair and my shadow.
As it happens, I am tired of being a man.
Nonetheless, it would be delicious
to frighten a notary with a fresh-cut lily,
or mortify a nun with a smack on the ear.
It would be lovely
to roam the streets with a green knife
yelling until I froze to death.
I do not want to go on like a root in the dark,
wavering, stretched out, shivering with a dream,
down, into the moist guts of the earth,
absorbing and thinking, consuming daily.
I do not want such misfortunes.
I do not want to continue rooting to the tomb,
alone underground with a cellar full of corpses
frozen solid, killing me with sorrow.
This is why Monday burns like gasoline
when I show up with my jailbird face,
and howls on its way like a wounded wheel
and takes hot-blooded steps into the night.
It pushes me to familiar corners, damp houses,
hospitals where the bones fly out the windows,
to cobbler shops that smell of vinegar,
terrible, cavernous streets.
There are sulfur-colored birds, and foul intestines
hanging over the doors of these houses,
false teeth misplaced in a cafeteria,
there are mirrors
that should be crying with shame and horror,
everywhere umbrellas, poisons, umbilical cords.
I walk calmly, with eyes, shoes,
rage and oblivion,
step through office buildings and orthopedic shops,
and courtyards where washing hangs from the line:
underwear, towels, and shirts that weep
slow filthy tears.
….
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul
…
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way …
— Pablo Neruda, “Sonnet XVII”
“He saw that women, the tenderest and most fragile of all God’s creatures, were oftenest superior to sorrow, adversity, and distress; and he saw that it was because they bore, in their own hearts, an inexhaustible well-spring of affection and devotion.”
— The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens