Read "Thorns, shattered glass, sickness, crying: all day" by Pablo Neruda online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Thorns, shattered glass, sickness, crying: all day they attack the honeyed contentment. And neither the tower, nor the walls, nor secret passageways are of much help.
Trouble seeps through, into the sleepers' peace.
Sorrow rises and falls, comes near with its deep spoons, and no one can live without this endless motion; without it there would be no birth, no roof, no fence.
It happens: we have to account for it.
Eyes squeezed shut in love don't help, nor soft beds far from the pestilent sick, from the conqueror who advances, pace by pace, with his flag.
For life throbs like a bile, like a river: it opens a bloody tunnel where eyes stare through at us, the eyes of a huge and sorrowful family.