El Mar

El Mar
Pablo Neruda circa 1950 (Translated from Spanish)
#12

For me, poetry is about the soul; it’s Beethoven without music. It reaches out to me, touching my being with a finger light touch and yet knocks me off my metaphorical feet with the sheer joy and beauty of the words. This is the first poem I ever read that did just that. I can remember sitting and opening the book and reading this first poem again and again, trying to take in the beauty. Pablo (for that’s what I would call him if we could meet, he understands me so well) writes with such simplicity and yet encompasses the vast essence of being. This poem is a beautiful moment encapsulated in words— one of those moments where existence pauses, where the light catches the dust motes and sets them ablaze and you can hear the perfection of comforting silence in every syllable, both audible and mental. “I reconstruct the day out of a fragment, the stalactite from a sliver of salt, and the great god out of a spoonful.” I live for those moments, keeping them like treasures, waiting breathlessly for the next one. And so does he. Pablo Neruda makes a life of those moments, breathing and learning in the sea and truly living life. We are the same in that sense; Pablo and I. In my brightest most perfect moments I am living life, completely open and vulnerable to knowledge and emotion. The smallest spark changes everything in an instant and yet everything is the same, just deeper, wilder, and more aware. The passion of this poem feeds the fire of my own purpose for life, making my insignificant life meaningful in a sentient, beautiful and vast universe. My awareness and existence matter in some small way. “The fact is that until I fall asleep, in some magnetic way I move in the university of waves”.

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I need the sea because it teaches me.
I don’t know if I learn music or awareness,
if it’s a single wave or its vast existence,
or only its harsh voice or its shining
suggestion of fishes and ships.
The fact is that until I fall asleep,
in some magnetic way I move in
the university of waves.

It’s not simple the shells crunched
as if some shivering planet
were giving signs of it’s gradual death;
no, I reconstruct the day out of a fragment,
the stalactite from a sliver of salt,
and the great god out of a spoonful.

What it taught me before, I keep! It’s air
ceaseless wind, water and sand.

It seems a small thing for a young man,
to have come here to live with his own fire;
nevertheless, the pulse that rose
and fell in its abyss,
the crackling of the blue cold,
the gradual wearing away of the star,
the soft unfolding of the wave
squandering snow with its foam,
the quiet power out there, sure
as a stone shrine in the depths,
replaced my world in which were growing
stubborn sorrow, gathering oblivion,
and my life changed suddenly;as I became part of its pure movement.