Elegy by Pablo Neruda — Read

Alone, in the wilderness,

I want to weep like the rivers, I want to grow dark, to sleep like an ancient mineral night.

Why did the radiant keys reach the bandit's hands? Rise up, maternal Oello, rest your secret upon this night's long fatigue and infuse my veins with your advice.

I don't ask you yet for the Yupanquis' sun.

I speak to you from my sleep, calling from land to land, Peruvian mother, cordilleran matrix.

How did the avalanche of daggers penetrate your sandy precinct?

Immobile in your hands,

I feel the metals stretching away in the subterranean channels.

I'm made of your roots but I don't understand, the earth doesn't grant me your wisdom,

I see nothing but night upon night beneath the starry lands.

What senseless serpent's dream slithered up to the red line?

Bereaved eyes, sinister plant.

How did you come to this vinegar wind, how did Capac not raise his tiara of blinding clay amid the pinnacles of wrath?

Beneath the pavilions, let me suffer and sink like the lifeless root that will never beam forth.

Beneath the harsh hard night

I'll descend through the earth until

I reach the jaws of gold.

I want to stretch out on the nocturnal stone.

I want to reach calamity.