the_poet___neruda camille The Poet That time when I moved among happenings in the midst of my mournful devotions; that time when i cherished a leaflet of quartz, and stared at a lifetime's vocation. I ranged in the markets of avarice. where goodness is bought for a price, breathed the insensate miasmas of envy, the inhuman contention of masks and existences. I endured in the bog-dweller's element; the lily that breaks on the water in a sudden disturbance of bubbles and blossoms, devoured me. Whatever the foot sought, the spirit deflected, or sheered toward the fang of the pit. So my poems took being, in travail retrieved from the thorn, like a penance, wrenched by a seizure of hands, out of solitude; or they parted for burial their secretest flower in immodesty's garden. Estranged to myself, like shadow on water that moves through a corridor's fathoms, I sped throught the exile of each man's existence, this way and that, and so, to habitual loathing; for I saw that their being was this: to stifle one half of existence's fullness like fish in an alien limit of ocean. And there, in immensity's mire, I encountered their death; Death grazing the barriers, Death opening roadways and doorways. Pablo Neruda 000315 ... Bespeckled "I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair. Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets. Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps. I hunger for your sleek laugh, your hands the color of a savage harvest, hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails, I want to eat your skin like a whole almond. I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body, the sovereign nose of your arrogant face, I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes, and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight, hunting for you, for your hot heart, like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue." -Pablo Something about Pablo Neruda's poetry makes us feel like we know him intimately - probably because he writes with the same truth, that same desperate, primal sincerity that we all feel so strongly in our own souls, brimming over with a need to be made known, and that we all mean to convey in our poetry, but so often fail to do. I love Pablo Neruda's words. 031125 ... oldephebe i so exuberantly concure..well maybe not exuberantly..maybe like a knowing and not perfunctory nod..:) 031125 ... nonsenscal he's one of my favorite poets. 031125 ... pd he speaks of the secrets i lock behind my walls 040221 ... unhinged . 090308 what's it to you? who go blather from