Tuesday, October 04, 2011

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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4 comments:

  1. Claire - Such a thoughts as I think but have not put into words as clear, beauty to match that of your painting...it is, we are, all one, in our ordinariness, in our specialness. xo

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  2. Dear Marylinn, Neruda's poem made me think of you and your wise words - 'We are all one water'. Healing words they were, as are these I think -

    ". . . let us not fill our mouths
    with so many faltering names,
    with so many sad formallities,
    with so many pompous letters,
    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."

    xo

    ReplyDelete
  3. Entirely healing, insightful...so much signing of papers. Our time would be burned to nothing - sometimes nearly seems to be - with matters that do not matter, really. xo

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  4. Dear Marylinn - yes, we are constantly called to reassess our relationship to things, people, time. . . what counts, what is to be set down and what picked up and more deeply engaged with. As for all those papers we're 'supposed' to sign? Hmm. . . daily bonfires lit with cleansing and renewal in mind? L, C xo

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