The Night in Isla Negra

The Night in Isla Negra

Ancient night and the unruly salt

beat at the walls of my house.

The shadow is all one, the sky

throbs now along with the ocean,

and sky and shadow erupt

in the crash of their vast conflict.

All night long they struggle;

nobody knows the name

of the harsh light that keeps slowly opening

like a languid fruit.

So on the coast comes to light,

out of seething shadow, the harsh dawn,

gnawed at by the moving salt,

swept clean by the mass of night,

bloodstained in its sea-washed crater.

Pablo Neruda