Explore "The Unburied Woman" by Pablo Neruda on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
In Paita, we asked about her, the Dead Woman, so that we could touch, could feel the earth of the Buried Woman's radiance.
They did not know.
The old balustrades, the balconies in the sky, an aged city of vines with an intrepid aroma like a basket of invincible mangoes, pineapples, deep chirimoyas.
The market flies buzz over the neglect and abandon, among the severed fish heads, and the Indian women, seated, selling uncertain spoils with ferocious majesty- queens from a realm of subterranean copper- the day was enshrouded in clouds, the day was weary, the day was a lost traveler on foot, on a road of dust and bewilderment.
I stopped the boy, the man, the old man- they did not know where
Manuela had perished, or where her home once existed, or where the powder of her bones now rested.
Above, the burnished hills traveled, dry as camels, on a motionless journey, on a trip with the dead, and because water is movement, the spring runs without rest, the river grows and sings.
There the hard mountains walked with time; the ages, the quiescent travels of plush hills.
I asked them about Manuelita, but they did not know, they did not remember the names of flowers.
We asked the sea, the ancient ocean.
In the foam of breaking waves, the Peruvian sea opened old Incan eyes, and the toothless turquoise mouth began to speak.