Modestly by Pablo Neruda — Read

We are supposed to know certain common virtues, vestments for each day of the week that we see so often they become invisible and do not surrender us to the mysterious, to the fire swallower or the spider woman.

Without doubt I praise the wild excellence, the old-fashioned reverence, the natural see, the economy of sublime truths that cling to rock upon rock in succeeding generations, like certain mollusks who conquered the sea.

We are all the people, the gray links of lives that repeat themselves until death, and we never wear unfitting uniforms, no precise tears: it's proper that we communicate, have clean love, pure bread, soccer, side streets with garbage in the doorways, the dogs with complacent tails, the juice of a lemon with the arrival of the peaceful fish.

I ask permission to be like everybody else, like the rest of the world and what's more, like anybody else:

I beg you, with all my heart, if we are talking about me, since we are talking about me, please resist blasting the trumpet during my visit and resign yourselves to my quiet absence.