poems
Poems
THE WORDS THEY SING
Pablo Neruda, From his memoirs.
It's the words that sing, they soar and descend. . . .
I bow to them . . . I love them, I cling to them, .
I run them down, I bite into them, I melt them down . . . .
I love words so much . . . The unexpected ones . . . .
The ones I wait for greedily or stalk until, suddenly, .
they drop . . . Vowels I love . . . They glitter like.
colored stones, they leap like silver fish, they are foam, .
thread, metal dew . . . I run after certain words . . . .
They are so beautiful that I want to fit them all into my poem . . . .
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 . . . And then I stir them, I shake them, .
I drink them, I gulp them down, I mash them, I garnish them, .
I let them go . . . I leave them in my poem like stalactites, .
like slivers of polished wood, like coals, pickings from a shipwreck, .
gifts from the waves . . . Everything exists in the word. .
This is one of Neruda's free form poems from early in his career.
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