To the solemn sea the old women come
With their shawls knotted around their necks
With their fragile feet cracking.
They sit down alone on the shore
Without moving their eyes or their hands
Without changing the clouds or the silence.
The obscene sea breaks and claws
Rushes downhill trumpeting
Shakes its bull's beard.
With their shawls knotted around their necks
With their fragile feet cracking.
They sit down alone on the shore
Without moving their eyes or their hands
Without changing the clouds or the silence.
The obscene sea breaks and claws
Rushes downhill trumpeting
Shakes its bull's beard.
The gentle old ladies seated
As if in a transparent boat
They look at the terrorist waves.
Where will they go and where have they been?
They come from every corner
They come from our own lives.
Now they have the ocean
The cold and burning emptiness
The solitude full of flames.
They come from all the pasts
From houses which were fragrant
From burnt-up evenings.
They look, or don't look, at the sea
With their walking sticks they draw signs in the sand
And the sea erases their calligraphy.
The old women get up and go away
With their fragile bird feet
While the waves flood in
Traveling naked in the wind.
Pablo Neruda
El Mar
NECESITO del mar porque me enseña:
no sé si aprendo música o conciencia:
no sé si es ola sola o ser profundo
o sólo ronca voz o deslumbrante
suposición de peces y navios.
El hecho es que hasta cuando estoy dormido
de algún modo magnético circulo
en la universidad del oleaje.
No son sólo las conchas trituradas
como si algún planeta tembloroso
participara paulatina muerte,
no, del fragmento reconstruyo el día,
de una racha de sal la estalactita
y de una cucharada el dios inmenso.
Lo que antes me enseñó lo guardo! Es aire,
incesante viento, agua y arena.
Parece poco para el hombre joven
que aquí llegó a vivir con sus incendios,
y sin embargo el pulso que subía
y bajaba a su abismo,
el frío del azul que crepitaba,
el desmoronamiento de la estrella,
el tierno desplegarse de la ola
despilfarrando nieve con la espuma,
el poder quieto, allí, determinado
como un trono de piedra en lo profundo,
substituyó el recinto en que crecían
tristeza terca, amontonando olvido,
y cambió bruscamente mi existencia:
di mi adhesión al puro movimiento.
Pablo Neruda
2 comments:
I'm back... I hear the beer there is cheap and there is a lot of curry. Do you have a date set for departure? It looks the local treats are hard to walk away from...
The silly joke today is:
A travelling salesman broke down on the bad side of town one evening after a long day of door-to-door sales. After calling AAA from a payphone, he decided to wait in for the tow truck in a nearby bar.
He sat down on a bar stool in the corner of the bar to quietly nurse his beer. Trying to mind his own business, he was shocked to look across the bar to find a very large, muscular sailor doing shots. While the sailor's chest and arms were huge, the salesman was shocked to notice that his head was about as big as a grapefruit. Needless to say, he couldn't help but stare.
Soon the sailor stood up from his stool and swaggered over to the salesman, who was shaking in his loafers. When he reached him, the sailor said, "I see you staring at my head over here."
"N-no," the salesman responds, "I wasn't, really, I .."
"That's okay," the sailor said and sits down next to him. "I want to tell you my story. I was out at sea last year and there was a terrible storm. My ship was sunk, and everyone drowned but me. I struggled to stay afloat and managed to swim to the shore of a deserted island. I stayed there all alone for six months, eating coconuts and crabs.
One morning I was woken up by screams coming from the lagoon. Running down there, I discovered a woman struggling in the thick seaweed. I ran down to the water, ripped the seaweed from her naked body, and pulled her up to the beach. She was a mermaid! I stood gawking at her for a while, and then she thanked me, offering to grant me three wishes.
My first wish was to be back home before the end of the day. She said, 'Okay.' My second wish was to have a billion dollars so I would never have to go to sea again. She said, 'Okay.' Then I scratched my head and tried to think of something else. I said, 'Well, since I don't really need anything else, how about we have some sex?' She smiled and wagged her fish tail at me. 'Silly,' she said, 'look at me. I can't have sex with you.' I laughed and said, 'Oh okay, then how about a little head?'"
I found a funny boating picture. Let's see if the link works in the blog.
http://messingaboutinboats.typepad.com/sailing/images/laugh1.jpg
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