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
