Explore "The Bordellos" by Pablo Neruda on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The bordello, born of prosperity, accompanied the banner of stacked bills: respected bilge of capital, ship's hold of my times.
They were mechanized brothels in the hair of Buenos Aires, fresh meat exported, owing to adversity in remote cities and fields, where money stalked the earthen pitchers' movements and imprisoned the vine.
Rural brothels, of a winter night, with horses at the village outskirts and bewildered girls falling from sale to sale in the magnates' hands.
Languorous provincial call houses in which the town's gentry
-dictators of the wine harvest- startle the venereal night with chilling death rattles.
Hidden in the corners, a flock of whores, inconstant phantoms, passengers of the mortal train-now they've taken you, now you're in the sullied net, now you can't return to the sea, now they stalked you and hunted you down, now you're dead in the void of the rawest part of life, now your shadow slinks along the walls: throughout the earth these walls lead to death alone.