Read "To Fidel Castro" by Pablo Neruda online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Fidel, Fidel, the people are grateful for words in action and deeds that sing, that is why I bring from far a cup of my country's wine: it is the blood of a subterranean people that from the shadows reaches your throat, they are miners who have lived for centuries extracting fire from the frozen land.
They go beneath the sea for coal but on returning they are like ghosts: they grew accustomed to eternal night, the working-day light was robbed from them, nevertheless here is the cup of so much suffering and distances: the happiness of imprisoned men possessed by darkness and illusions who from the inside of mines perceive the arrival of spring and its fragrances because they know that Man is struggling to reach the amplest clarity.