Only Death





There are singular cemeteries,
tombs filled with bones without sound,
the heart passing through a dark,
dark, dark tunnel,
like an internal shipwreck we die,
as we are drowning in the heart,
as we go falling from skin to soul.

There are cadavers,
there are feet of a cold alluring tombstone,
there is death in bones,
like a pure sound,
like a bark without a dog,
ringing from certain bells, from certain tombs
growing in the humidity of crying or rain.

I see, alone, at times,
coffins at sea
sailing with the  pallid deceased, with women
of moribund braids,
with bakers white like angels,
with thoughtful girls married to notaries,
coffins climbing the vertical river of death,
the purple river,
upwards, with sails swelling by the sound of death,
swelling by the silent sound of death.

Death arrives at the sonorous
like a shoe without a foot, like a suit without a man,
arrives to strike with a ring without rock or finger,
arrives to scream without mouth, without tongue, without throat.
Nevertheless its steps sound
and its raiments sound, quietly, like a tree.

I don’t know, I know little, I hardly see,
but I believe that its song is the color of humid violets,
of violets accustomed to the earth,
because the face of death is green,
and the glance of death is green,
with the sharp humidity of a violet leaf
and its grave color of an exasperated Winter.

But death goes still about the world dressed in a broom,
licking the floor in search of the dead,
death is in the broom,
it’s the tongue of death looking for the dead,
it’s the needle of death looking for thread.
Death is in the cots:
in slow mattresses, in black blankets
it lives laid out, and suddenly breathes:
breathes a dark sound that swells sheets,
and there are beds navigating to a port
where it’s waiting, dressed like an admiral.


Pablo Neruda