Explore "It Is Not Necessary" by Pablo Neruda on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It is not necessary to whistle to be alone, to live in the dark.
Out in the crowd, under the wide sky, we remember our separate selves, the intimate self, the naked self, the only self who knows how the nails grow, who knows how his own silence is made and his own poor words.
There is a public Pedro, seen in the light, an adequate Bernice, but inside, underneath age and clothing, we still don't have a name, we are quite different.
Eyes don't close only in order to sleep, but so as not to see the same sky.
We soon grow tired, and as if they were sounding the bell to call us to school, we return to the hidden flower, to the bone, the half-hidden root, and there we suddenly are, we are the pure, forgotten self, the true being within the four walls of our singular skin, between the two points of living and dying.