Tuesday Poem - Too Many Names by Pablo Neruda

          Too Many Names

            Mondays are meshed with Tuesdays

            and the week with the whole year.

            Time cannot be cut

            with your weary scissors,

            and all the names of the day

            are washed out by the waters of night.

            No one can claim the name of Pedro,

            nobody is Rosa or Maria,

            all of us are dust or sand,

            all of us are rain under rain.

            They have spoken to me of Venezuelas,

            of Chiles and of Paraguays;

            I have no idea what they are saying.

            I know only the skin of the earth

            and I know it is without a name.

            When I lived amongst the roots

            they pleased me more than flowers did,

            and when I spoke to a stone

            it rang like a bell.

            It is so long, the spring

            which goes on all winter.

            Time lost its shoes.

            A year is four centuries.

            When I sleep every night,

            what am I called or not called?

            And when I wake, who am I

            if I was not while I slept?

           This means to say that scarcely

           have we landed into life

           than we come as if new-born;

           let us not fill our mouths

           with so many faltering names,

           with so many sad formallities,

           with so many pompous letters,

           with so much of yours and mine,

           with so much of signing of papers.

           I have a mind to confuse things,

           unite them, bring them to birth,

           mix them up, undress them,

           until the light of the world

           has the oneness of the ocean,

           a generous, vast wholeness,

           a crepitant fragrance.

           Pablo Neruda

One Ocean, One People - Oil on paper - CB

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