Pablo Neruda Quotes - Page 11

The word was born in the blood, grew in the dark body, beating, and took flight through the lips and the mouth. Farther away and nearer still, still it came from dead fathers and from wondering races, from lands which had turned to stone, lands weary of their poor tribes, for when grief took to the roads the people set out and arrived and married new land and water to grow their words again. And so this is the inheritance; this is the wavelength which connects us with dead men and the dawning of new beings not yet come to light.

Is 4 the same 4 for everybody? Are all sevens equal? When the convict ponders the light is it the same light that shines on you?

Death arrives among all that sound like a shoe with no foot in it, like a suit with no man in it, comes and knocks, using a ring with no stone in it, with no finger in it, comes and shouts with no mouth, with no tongue,with no throat. Nevertheless its steps can be heard and its clothing makes a hushed sound, like a tree.

I stalk certain words... I catch them in mid-flight, as they buzz past, I trap them, clean them, peel them, I set myself in front of the dish, they have a crystalline texture to me, vibrant, ivory, vegetable, oily, like fruit, like algae, like agates, like olives... I stir them, I shake them, I drink them, I gulp them down, I mash them, I garnish them... I leave them in my poem like stalactites, like slivers of polished wood, like coals, like pickings from a shipwreck, gifts from the waves... Everything exists in the word.

Wakening from the dreaming forest there, the hazel-sprig sang under my tongue, its drifting fragrance climbed up through my conscious mind as if suddenly the roots I had left behind cried out to me, the land I had lost with my childhood - and I stopped, wounded by the wandering scent.

While I'm writing, I'm far away; and when I come back, I've gone.

Whom can I ask what I came to make happen in this world? Why do I move without wanting to, why am I not able to sit still? Why do I go rolling without wheels, flying without wings or feathers, and why did I decide to migrate if my bones live in Chile?

And what importance do I have in the courtroom of oblivion?

For now I ask no more Than the justice of eating.

The darkness of a day elapsed, of a day nourished with our sad blood.

Oh each successive night that comes has something in it of an abandoned ember that is slowly burning out, and it falls swathed in ruins, surrounded by funereal objects.

There's a country spread out in the sky, a credulous carpet of rainbows and crepuscular plants: I move toward it just a bit haggardly, trampling a gravedigger's rubble still moist from the spade to dream in a bedlam of vegetables.

Como se reparten el sol en el naranjo las naranjas? How do the oranges divide up sunlight in the orange tree?

Why wasn't Christopher Columbus able to discover Spain?

Then Scale by scale, We strip off The delicacy And eat The peaceful mush Of its green heart.

We came by night to the Fortunate Isles, And lay like fish Under the net of our kisses.

Megaphone in which the wind passes singing.

I want to see the thirst inside the syllables I want to touch the fire in the sound: I want to feel the darkness of the cry. I want words as rough as virgin rocks.” - Verb.

Donde termina el arco iris, en tu alma o en el horizonte? Where does the rainbow end, in your soul or on the horizon?

For me writing is like breathing. I could not live without breathing and I could not live without writing.

Nobody can claim the name of Pedro, nobody is Rosa or María, all of us are dust or sand, all of us are rain under rain. They have spoken to me of Venezuelas, of Chiles and Paraguays; I have no idea what they are saying. I know only the skin of the earth and I know it has no name.

So the freshness lives on in a lemon, in the sweet-smelling house of the rind, the proportions, arcane and acerb.

As slippery as smooth grapes, words exploding in the light like dormant seeds waiting in the vaults of vocabulary, alive again, and giving life: once again the heart distills them.

She did not speak for speech was unknown to her.

When your hands leap towards mine, love, what do they bring me in flight?