Pablo Neruda

“It is not necessary to whistle

to be alone,

to live in the dark.

 

Out in the crowd, under the wide sky,

we remember our separate selves,

the intimate self,the naked self,

the only self who knows how the nails grow,

who knows how his own silence is made

and his own poor words.

There is a public Perdro,

seen in the light, an adequate Bernice,

but inside,

underneath age and clothing,

we still don’t have a name,

we are quite different.

Eyes don’t close only in order to sleep,

but so as not to see the same sky.

 

We soon grow tired,

and as if they were sounding the bell

to call us to school,

we return to the hidden flower,

to the bone, the half- hidden root,

and there we suddenly are,

we are the pure forgotten self,

the true being

within the four walls of our singular skin,

between the two points of living and dying.”

 

It is not Necessary, From Isla Negra