A young couple opened a door by Pablo Neruda

A young couple opened a door that I didn't know before either.

She was golden as the month of June, he an engineer with lofty eyes.

From then on I shared bread and wine with them, little by little

I reached their unknown intimacy.

They told me: "We were separated, our dissension was now eternal: today we joined to welcome you, today we awaited you together."

There, united in the little room, we embodied silent fortitude.

I kept silence even in my sleep.

I was in the dead center of the city, I almost heard the Traitor's footsteps, beside the walls that separated me, I heard the jailors' filthy voices, their crooked laughter, their drunk syllables inserted amid bullets in my homeland's waist.

The belches of Holgers and Pobletes almost brushed my silent skin, their footsteps, shuffling along, almost touched my heart and its bonfires: they, consigning my people to torment,

I preserving my swordlike health.

And again, in the night, goodbye, Irene, goodbye, Andres, goodbye, new friend, goodbye to the scaffolds, to the star, goodbye perhaps to the unfinished house which in front of my window seemed to become filled with linear phantoms.

Goodbye to the minute speck of mountain that gathered in my eyes every afternoon, goodbye to the green neon light that opened every new night with its lightning.

JACK SCHMITT