Births by Pablo Neruda
We will never remember dying.
We were so patient
about being,
noting down
the numbers, the days,
the years and the months,
the hair, the mouths we kissed,
but that moment of dying:
we surrender it without a note,
we give it to others as remembrance,
or we give it simply to water,
to water, to air, to time.
Nor do we keep
the memory of our birth,
though being born was important and fresh:
and now you don’t even remember one detail,
and haven’t kept even a branch
of the first light.
It’s well known that we are born.
It’s well known that in the room
or in the woods
or in the hut in the fishermen’s district
or in the crackling canefields
there is a very unusual silence,
a moment solemn as wood,
a woman gets ready to give birth.
It’s well known that we were born.
But of the profound jolt
from not being to existing, to having hands,
to seeing, to having eyes,
to eating and crying and overflowing
and loving and loving and suffering and suffering,
of that transition or shudder
of the electric essence that takes on
one body more, like a living cup,
and of that disinhabited woman,
the mother who is left there with her blood
and her torn fullness,
and her end and beginning, and the disorder
that troubles the pulse, the floor, the blankets
until everything gathers and adds
one knot more to the thread of life,
nothing, there is nothing left in your memory
of the pierce sea that lifted a wave
and knocked down a dark apple from the tree.
The only thing you remember is your life.
At 4:24 this afternoon, I will officially be 36.
Today I remember the profound jolt,
the loving and suffering,
the overflowing.
I have a beautiful life
and for that I am eternally grateful.
xoxo,
M
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That poem is absolutely gorgeous. Thank you.
A very happy (belated) birthday to you!! I love that poem.
-Jaime
Happy Birthday!
Beautiful.
Happy birthday to you. I too, turned 36 this year, just a couple of weeks ago. Small world.