Explore "Numbered" by Pablo Neruda on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Today is the twenty-seventh, a twenty-seventh.
Who numbered the days?
What is this about?
I ask in this world, on this earth, in this century, in this time, in this numerical life, why, why were we ordered, reduced to quantities?
Why was daylight divided, the winter rain, the bread baked under the sun every summer, seeds, trains, silence, death with its numbered houses in the immense white cemeteries, streets in rows?
Each of us by number, shriek not only those in charge of camps and ovens, but also the fleshy, unavoidable brunettes and sugar-coated blondes: we are rolled into numbers and soon fall off a list into oblivion.
My name is three-hundred, forty-six, or seven.
Humbly I keep my books until I get to zero, and I'm gone.