Ode to the Book

Ode to the Book

When I close a book

I open life.

I hear

faltering cries

among harbours.

Copper ignots

slide down sand-pits

to Tocopilla.

Night time.

Among the islands

our ocean

throbs with fish,

touches the feet, the thighs,

the chalk ribs

of my country.

The whole of night

clings to its shores, by dawn

it wakes up singing

as if it had excited a guitar.

The oceans surge is calling.

The wind

calls me

and Rodriguez calls,

and Jose Antonio--

I got a telegram

from the "Mine" Union

and the one I love

(whose name I wont let out)

expects me in Bucalemu.

No book has been able

to wrap me in paper,

to fill me up

with typography,

with heavenly imprints

or was ever able

to bind my eyes,

I come out of books to people orchards

with the hoarse family of my song,

to work the burning metals

or to eat smoked beef

by mountain firesides.

I love adventurous

books,

books of forest or snow,

depth or sky

but hate

the spider book

in which thought

has laid poisonous wires

to trap the juvenile

and circling fly.

Book, let me go.

I wont go clothed

in volumes,

I dont come out

of collected works,

my poems

have not eaten poems--

they devour

exciting happenings,

feed on rough weather,

and dig their food

out of earth and men.

Im on my way

with dust in my shoes

free of mythology:

send books back to their shelves,

Im going down into the streets.

I learned about life

from life itself,

love I learned in a single kiss

and could teach no one anything

except that I have lived

with something in common among men,

when fighting with them,

when saying all their say in my song.

Pablo Neruda