The First Sea by Pablo Neruda — Read

I discovered the sea. From Carahue the river Cautín flowed to its estuary and, in the paddleboats, dreams and another life began to possess me, leaving questions in my eyelashes.

A frail child, a bird, a solitary student or a shadowy fish,

I stood alone in the prow, aloof from joy, while the world of the little ship, unaware of me, unwound the thread of the accordions.

The passing visitors of summer and the water were eating and singing.

I, in the prow, small, hardly human, lost, still without mind or voice, or any joy, transfixed by the movement of the water flowing between the receding mountains- mine alone were those solitary places, mine alone that elemental pathway, mine alone the universe.

Rapture of the rivers, banks of thicket and fragrance, sudden boulders, burnt-out trees, and land, ample and lonely.

Child of those rivers,

I kept on traveling the earth along the same river edges toward the same sea foam and when the sea of that time crashed down like a broken tower, rose curling in its rage,

I broke free of my roots.

My country grew in size.

My world of wood split open.

The prison of the forests opened a green door, letting in the wave in all its thunder, and, with the shock of the sea, my life widened out into space.