THE SEAI need the sea because it teaches me.
I don't know if I learn music or awareness,
if it's a single wave or its vast existence,
or only its harsh voice or its shining
suggestion of fishes and ships.
The fact is that until I fall asleep,
in some magnetic way I move in
the university of the waves.
It's not simply the shells crunched
as if some shivering planet
were giving signs of its gradual death;
no, I reconstruct the day out of a fragment,
the stalactite from a sliver of salt,
and the great god out of a spoonful.
What it taught me before, I keep. It's air,
ceaseless wind, water and sand.
It seems a small thing for a young man,
to have come here to live with his own fire;
nevertheless, the pulse that rose
and fell in its abyss,
the crackling of the blue cold,
the gradual wearing away of the star,
the soft unfolding of the wave
squandering snow with its foam,
the quiet power out there, sure
as a stone shrine in the depths,
replaced my world in which were growing
stubborn sorrow, gathering oblivion,
and my life changed suddenly:
as I became part of its pure movement.
--Pablo Neruda
translated by Alastair Reed
from Pablo Neruda, On the Blue Shore of Silence: Poems of the Sea,
Harper-Collins, New York, 2003.
A great thematic and illustrated volume of Neruda's poetry: highly recommended!
P.S. If you'd like Neruda's original Spanish, seek out On the Blue Shore of Silence, which offers both Neruda's Spanish and Reid's English translations, or contact me.
Photos: Monastery Beach, Carmel, CA. June 20th, 2011.
(If you can click for a close-up of the top photo, you may see the foam acting funky. I love waves and all the permutations of flow and foam.)
