Finale

By Pablo Neruda 1904–1973 Pablo Neruda

Translated By William O'Daly

Matilde, years or days

sleeping, feverish,

here or there,

gazing off,

twisting my spine,

bleeding true blood,

perhaps I awaken

or am lost, sleeping:

hospital beds, foreign windows,

white uniforms of the silent walkers,

the clumsiness of feet.

And then, these journeys

and my sea of renewal:

your head on the pillow,

your hands floating

in the light, in my light,

over my earth.

It was beautiful to live

when you lived!

The world is bluer and of the earth

at night, when I sleep

enormous, within your small hands.

Reprinted from The Sea and the Bells (2002) by Pablo Neruda, translated by William O’Daly. Used by permission of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org.

Source: The Sea and the Bells (City Lights Books, 2002)

Biography

“No writer of world renown is perhaps so little known to North Americans as Chilean poet Pablo Neruda,” observed New York Times Book Review critic Selden Rodman. Numerous critics have praised Neruda as the greatest poet writing in the Spanish language during his lifetime, although many readers in the United States have found it difficult to disassociate Neruda’s poetry from his fervent commitment to communism. An added . . .

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