Explore "We Will Not Find Her" by Pablo Neruda on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
No, the earthy woman does not rest at sea.
Manuela doesn't exist without a pathway, without a star, without a ship, only among the tempests.
Her heart was bread, and then it became flour and sand.
It spread through the burning hills, her silence, transformed through space.
The solitary woman is not here- but she is here.
Her hand doesn't rest; it is not possible to find her rings or her bosom, or her mouth which the ray guided with its long whip of lemon blossoms.
The traveler will not find
Paita's sleeping lady in this crypt-not surrounded by wormy lances, by useless marble in the intractable graveyard which protects its dead against dust and the sea.
In this promontory, there is no tomb for Manuelita.
There is no burial for the flower.
There is no sepulchre for the scattered beauty.
Her name is not preserved in wood or on the brutal temple stone.
She went away. Her essence spread out among the hard cordilleras, and she was lost amid salt and boulders, the saddest eyes of the world.
Her braids became water in Peruvian rivers, and her kisses thinned out in the mountain air.
Here, we find the earth, the dreams, the quivering flags, and she is here-but it's too late for anyone to piece together her beauty.