36

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