Explore "Puerto Rico, Puerto Pobre" by Pablo Neruda on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It is late, at this stage, for a beginning, nevertheless this is my feeling: here as in other times I come forth to sing or to die: here I begin.
And there is no power that can silence me except the sad magnitude of time and of its ally: death with its plow for the farming of bones.
I have chosen a theme hot with blood, with palm trees and silence, it is about an island surrounded by many waters and infinite death: there the pain of those who wait grows and a river of lamentation bleeds, it is a poor and incarcerated island, ash-colored days come and go, the light flies off and returns to the palms, the night travels in its black ship and there she is, there is the prisoner, the island surrounded by suffering.
And our blood bleeds into hers because a golden claw separates her from her lovers and her birthright.