Explore "Guilty" by Pablo Neruda on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I declare myself guilty of not having made, with these hands they gave me, a broom.
Why did I make no broom?
Why did they give me hands?
What use have they been if all I ever did was watch the stir of the grain, listen up for the wind and did not gather straws still green in the earth for a broom, not set the soft stalks to dry and bind them in a gold bundle, and did not lash a wooden stick to the yellow skirt till I had a broom for the paths?
So it went.
How did my life get by without seeing, and learning, and gathering and binding the basic things?
It's too late to deny
I had the time, the time, yet the hands were lacking, so how could I aim for greatness if I was never able to make a broom, not one, not even one?