Neruda:

Neruda:

So many things fall from the pine--
green mustaches,
music,
cones like craggy stones
or armadillos--
like a book about to lose its leaves.

It too fell in my face,
the subtle petal
bearing a black seed:
it was a hymenopteran wing
of the pine tree,
a transmigration
of smoothnesses
in which flight unites
with the roots.

They fall,
drops of the tree:
punctuation,
vowels, consonants,
violins,
falling rain,
silence,
everything falls from the pine,
from the vertical air:
the fragrance falls,
the shadow riddled
by the daylight,
the night clear
as milk of moon,
the night black
as that absence.

Dawn breaks.

And a new day
falls
from the top of the pine,
falls with its clock,
with its needles
and its holes,
and in the dusk
the pine needles sew
another night to the light,
another day to the night.





Pablo Neruda, "House of Manteras in Punta del Este," (1968) from The Hands of Day, tr. William O'Daly. Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 2008.