Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda [Fabreeze]

from The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems, ed. Mark Eisner:

Ode to a Watch in the Night

In the night, in your hand

my watch glowed

like a firefly.

I heard

its ticking:

like a dry whisper

it arose

from your invisible hand.

Then your hand

returned to my dark breast

to gather my sleep and its pulse.

The watch

went on cutting time

with its little saw.

As in a forest

fragments of wood,

tiny drops, pieces

of branches or nests

fall

without changing the silence,

without ending the cool darkness,

so

from your invisible hand

the watch went on cutting

time, time,

and minutes fell

like leaves,

fibers of broken time,

little black feathers.

As in the forest

we smelled roots,

somewhere water released

a fat drop

like a wet grape.

A little mill

was grinding the night,

the shadow whispered

falling from your hand

and filled the earth.

Dust,

earth, distance,

my watch in the night

was grinding and grinding

from your hand.

I put

my arm

under your invisible neck,

under its warm weight,

and in my hand

time fell,

the night,

little noises

of wood and forest,

of divided night,

of fragments of shadow,

of water that falls and falls:

then
sleep fell

from the watch and from

your two sleeping hands,

it fell like the dark water

of the forests,

from the watch

to your body,

from you toward countries,

dark water,

time that falls

and runs

inside us.

And that’s how it was, that night,

shadow and space, earth

and time,

something that runs and falls

and passes.

And that’s how all the nights

go over the earth,

leaving only a vague

black odor.

A leaf falls,

a drop

on the earth

muffles its sound,

the forest sleeps, the waters,

the meadows,

the bells,

the eyes.

I hear you and you breathe,

my love,

we sleep.

[translated by Stephen Mitchell]