Great Throughts Treasury

"The flag arise me. Nobody would like me to stay on the pillow where your eyelids want to close the world to me. There would also let me sleep blood surrounding your sweetness. But arise, you, get up, get up but me and let's get together to grapple with the cobwebs of evil, against the system that distributes hunger, against the organization of misery. Going, and you, my star, next to me, newborn of my own clay, you've already found the spring that hidden in the fire and will be next to me, with your eyes mischievously, raising my flag."

"The heiress of the destroyed day."

"The mistakes which led me to a relative truth and the truths which repeatedly led me back to the mistakes did not allow me - and I never made any claims to it - to find my way to lead, to learn what is called the creative process, to reach the heights of literature that are so difficult of access. But one thing I realized - that it is we ourselves who call forth the spirits through our own myth-making. From the matter we use, or wish to use, there arise later on obstacles to our own development and the future development. We are led infallibly to reality and realism, that is to say to become indirectly conscious of everything that surrounds us and of the ways of change, and then we see, when it seems to be late, that we have erected such an exaggerated barrier that we are killing what is alive instead of helping life to develop and blossom. We force upon ourselves a realism which later proves to be more burdensome than the bricks of the building, without having erected the building which we had regarded as an indispensable part of our task. And, in the contrary case, if we succeed in creating the fetish of the incomprehensible (or the fetish of that which is comprehensible only to a few), the fetish of the exclusive and the secret, if we exclude reality and its realistic degenerations, then we find ourselves suddenly surrounded by an impossible country, a quagmire of leaves, of mud, of cloud, where our feet sink in and we are stifled by the impossibility of communicating."

"The road made wet by the water of August shines like it was cut in full moonlight."

"The poet is not a "little god". No, he is not a "little god". He is not picked out by a mystical destiny in preference to those who follow other crafts and professions. I have often maintained that the best poet is he who prepares our daily bread: the nearest baker who does not imagine himself to be a god. He does his majestic and unpretentious work of kneading the dough, consigning it to the oven, baking it in golden colors and handing us our daily bread as a duty of fellowship. And, if the poet succeeds in achieving this simple consciousness, this too will be transformed into an element in an immense activity, in a simple or complicated structure which constitutes the building of a community, the changing of the conditions which surround mankind, the handing over of mankind's products: bread, truth, wine, dreams. If the poet joins this never-completed struggle to extend to the hands of each and all his part of his undertaking, his effort and his tenderness to the daily work of all people, then the poet must take part, the poet will take part, in the sweat, in the bread, in the wine, in the whole dream of humanity. Only in this indispensable way of being ordinary people shall we give back to poetry the mighty breadth which has been pared away from it little by little in every epoch, just as we ourselves have been whittled down in every epoch."

"The moon lives in the lining of your skin."

"The street heaves and winds, burns and bumps, but the glass behind the locksmith, the old curator of timepieces, stands motionless with a single protruding eye, one amazing eye which peers into the mystery, the secret hearts of clocks, and looks deeply in until the elusive butterfly in its measure of time is trapped in his forehead and watch the wings of the beat."

"The sad rage, the shout, the solitude of the sea."

"The tears I cry not wait in small lakes? Do tears not yet spilled wait in small lakes? Or will invisible rivers and streams to sadness? Or they are unseen rivers run toward that sadness?"

"The shout facing the sea, among the rocks, running free, mad, in the sea-spray."

"The tears that do not cry wait in small lakes, or be invisible rivers that flow into the sadness?"

"The Truth is in the prologue. Death to the romantic fool, the expert in solitary confinement."

"The truth is that even if some or many consider me to be a sectarian, barred from taking a place at the common table of friendship and responsibility, I do not wish to defend myself, for I believe that neither accusation nor defense is among the tasks of the poet. When all is said, there is no individual poet who administers poetry, and if a poet sets himself up to accuse his fellows or if some other poet wastes his life in defending himself against reasonable or unreasonable charges, it is my conviction that only vanity can so mislead us. I consider the enemies of poetry to be found not among those who practice poetry or guard it but in mere lack of agreement in the poet. For this reason no poet has any considerable enemy other than his own incapacity to make himself understood by the most forgotten and exploited of his contemporaries, and this applies to all epochs and in all countries."

"The verb is origin and poured life is blood, blood is expressing its substance and willing and development."

"The whole human earth was bleeding. Time, buildings, routes, rain, erase the constellation of the crime, the fact is, this small planet has been covered a thousand times by blood, war or vengeance, ambush or battle, people fell, they were devoured, and later oblivion wiped clean each square meter: sometimes a vague, dishonest monument, other times a clause in bronze, and still later, conversations, births, townships, and then oblivion. What arts we have for extermination and what science to obliterate memory! What was bloody is covered with flowers. Once more, young men, ready yourselves for another chance to kill, to die again, and to scatter flowers over the blood."

"Then I speak to her in a language she has never heard, I speak to her in Spanish, in the tongue of the long, crepuscular verses of D¡az Casanueva; in that language in which Joaqu¡n Edwards preaches nationalism. My discourse is profound; I speak with eloquence and seduction; my words, more than from me, issue from the warm nights, from the many solitary nights on the Red Sea, and when the tiny dancer puts her arm around my neck, I understand that she understands. Magnificent language!"

"The word was born in the blood, grew in the dark body, beating, and took flight through the lips and the mouth. Farther away and nearer still, still it came from dead fathers and from wondering races, from lands which had turned to stone, lands weary of their poor tribes, for when grief took to the roads the people set out and arrived and married new land and water to grow their words again. And so this is the inheritance; this is the wavelength which connects us with dead men and the dawning of new beings not yet come to light."

"The verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture."

"The waves tell the firm coast: everything will be fulfilled."

"Then scale by scale, we strip off he delicacy and eat the peaceful mush of its green heart."

"There in Rangoon I realized that the gods were enemies, just like God, of the poor human being. Gods in alabaster extended like white whales, gods gilded like spikes, serpent gods entwining the crime of being born, naked and elegant buddhas smiling at the cocktail party of empty eternity like Christ on his horrible cross, all of them capable of anything, of imposing on us their heaven, all with torture or pistol to purchase piety or burn our blood, fierce gods made by men to conceal their cowardice, and there it was all like that, the whole earth reeking of heaven, and heavenly merchandise."

"There is no insurmountable solitude. All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song - but in this dance or in this song there are fulfilled the most ancient rites of our conscience in the awareness of being human and of believing in a common destiny."

"There is a certain pleasure in madness, that only mad known."

"There is something sad in the world that a stationary train in the rain?"

"There was the black solitude of the islands, and there, woman of love, your arms took me in."

"There was something awaiting us in the midst of this wild primeval forest. Suddenly, as if in a strange vision, we came to a beautiful little meadow huddled among the rocks: clear water, green grass, wild flowers, the purling of brooks and the blue heaven above, a generous stream of light unimpeded by leaves."

"There we stopped as if within a magic circle, as if guests within some hallowed place, and the ceremony I now took part in had still more the air of something sacred. The cowherds dismounted from their horses. In the midst of the space, set up as if in a rite, was the skull of an ox. In silence the men approached it one after the other and put coins and food in the eye-sockets of the skull. I joined them in this sacrifice intended for stray travelers, all kinds of refugees who would find bread and succor in the dead ox's eye sockets."

"There were thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit. There were grief and the ruins, and you were the miracle."

"They can cut all the flowers, but they can't stop the spring."

"They started life dreams and stop me, leave your question on my eyelashes."

"This is what I am, I'll say, to leave this written excuse. This is my life. Now it is clear this couldn't be done- that in this net it's not just the strings that count but the air that escapes through the meshes. Everything else stayed out of reach- time running like a hare across the February dew, and love, best not to talk of love which moved, a swaying of hips, leaving no more trace of all its fire than a spoonful of ash. That's how it is with so many passing things: the man who waited, believing, of course, the woman who was alive and will not be. All of them believed that, having teeth, feet, hands, and language, life was only a matter of honor. This one took a look at history, took in all the victories of the past, assumed an everlasting existence, and the only thing life gave him was his death, time not to be alive, and earth to bury him in the end. But all that was born with as many eyes as there are planets in the firmament, and all her devouring fire ruthlessly devoured her until the end. If I remember anything in my life, it was an afternoon in India, on the banks of a river. They were burning a woman of flesh and bone and I didn't know if what came from the sarcophagus was soul or smoke, until there was neither woman nor fire nor coffin nor ash. It was late, and only the night, the water, the river, the darkness lived on in that death."

"This is as long as the person? Thousand years or one? Lives in a week or a few centuries? Dies how long? What is the meaning of eternity?"

"This flesh and the other will be consumed, the flower will doubtless perish without residue, when death--sterile dawn, desiccated dust-- comes one day into the girdle of the haughty island, and you, statue, laughter of man, will remain gazing with the empty eyes that rose up through one and another hand of the absent immortals."

"This time is difficult, wait for me: we will live it out vividly. Give me your small hand: we will rise and suffer, we will feel and rejoice. We are once more the pair who lived in bristling places, in harsh nests in the rock. This time is difficult, wait for me with a basket, with a shovel, with your shoes and your clothes. Now we need each other not only for the carnations' sake, not only to look for honey: we need our hands to wash with and to make fire, and so let our difficult time stand up to infinity with four hands and four eyes."

"To harden the earth the rocks took charge: instantly they grew wings: the rocks that soared: the survivors flew up the lightning bolt, screamed in the night, a watermark, a violet sword, a meteor. The succulent sky had not only clouds, not only space smelling of oxygen, but an earthly stone flashing here and there changed into a dove, changed into a bell, into immensity, into a piercing wind: into a phosphorescent arrow, into salt of the sky."

"Together you and I, my love, seal the silence while the sea destroys its constant statues and collapses its towers of rapture and whiteness, because the plot of these invisible threads of runaway water, incessant sand, we hold the sole and harassed tenderness."

"Today is today, and yesterday was. No doubt."

"To whom I can ask what I came to do in this world? Do I move inadvertently? Why cannot I be still? Do I'm rolling without wheels, flying without wings or feathers? And what I got to transmigrate if you live in Chile my bones?"

"Tomorrow we will only give them a leaf of the tree of our love, a leaf which will fall on the earth like if it had been made by our lips like a kiss which falls from our invincible heights to show the fire and the tenderness of a true love."

"Tonight I can write the saddest lines...Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer and these the last verses that I write for her."

"Under your ski the moon is alive."

"Tonight I can write the saddest lines. Write for example, "The night is shattered and the blue stars shiver in the distance." The night wind revolves in the sky and sings. Tonight I can write the saddest lines. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. Through nights like this one, I held her in my arms. I kissed her again and again under the endless sky. She loved me, sometimes I loved her too. How could one not have loved her great still eyes. Tonight I can write the saddest lines. To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her. To hear the immense night, still more immense without her. And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture. What does it matter that my love could not keep her. The night is shattered and she is not with me. This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance. My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her. My sight searches for her as though to go to her. My heart looks for her, and she is not with me. The same night whitening the same trees. We, of that time, are no longer the same. I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her. My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing. Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before. Her bright body. Her infinite eyes. I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her. Love is so short, forgetting is so long. Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her. Thought this be the last pain that she makes me suffer and these the last verses that I write for her."

"We - then - we are not the same."

"Walking around happen to get tired of being a man. Happens that I walk into theaters tailors and withered, impenetrable, like a felt swan navigating on a water of origin and ash. Pelquer¡as the smell of it makes me mourn loudly. I just want a break from stones or wool, I just do not want to see establishments or gardens, no more goods, no spectacles, no elevators. Happens I am sick of my feet and my nails and my hair and my shadow. Happens that I get tired of being man. However would be delicious to scare a notary with a lily cut or kill joins nun with a blow on the ear. Would be great to go through the streets with a green knife letting out yells until I died of cold. Do not want to remain rooted in the dark, insecure, stretched out, shivering with sleep, down, into the moist guts of the earth, taking in and thinking, eating every day. do not want so much misery. Do not want to continue to root and a tomb, alone under the ground, cellar with dead numb, dying of grief. 's why Monday burns like oil when it sees me coming with my convict face, and howls on its way like a wounded wheel, and take steps towards evening hot blood. Y pushes me into certain corners, into some moist houses, into hospitals where the bones fly out the window, a certain shoe smelling vinegar, streets hideous as cracks. There are sulfur-colored birds, and hideous intestines hanging over the doors of the houses that I hate, no teeth forgotten in a coffeepot, there are mirrors that ought to have wept from shame and terror, there are umbrellas everywhere, and venoms, and umbilical cords. I walk calmly, with eyes, with shoes, with fury, with forgetfulness, step through office buildings and orthopedic shops, and courtyards with clothes hanging from the line: underwear, towels and shirts which weep. Slow dirty tears."

"Uprooting for the human being is a frustration that, in one way or another, atrophy clarity of his soul."

"We came by night to the Fortunate Isles, And lay like fish under the net of our kisses."

"We continued till we came to a natural tunnel which perhaps had been bored through the imposing rocks by some mighty vanished river or created by some tremor of the earth when these heights had been formed, a channel that we entered where it had been carved out in the rock in granite. After only a few steps our horses began to slip when they sought for a foothold in the uneven surfaces of the stone and their legs were bent, sparks flying from beneath their iron shoes - several times I expected to find myself thrown off and lying there on the rock. My horse was bleeding from its muzzle and from its legs, but we persevered and continued on the long and difficult but magnificent path."

"We had to cross a river. Up on the Andean summits there run small streams which cast themselves down with dizzy and insane force, forming waterfalls that stir up earth and stones with the violence they bring with them from the heights. But this time we found calm water, a wide mirrorlike expanse which could be forded. The horses splashed in, lost their foothold and began to swim towards the other bank. Soon my horse was almost completely covered by the water, I began to plunge up and down without support, my feet fighting desperately while the horse struggled to keep its head above water. Then we got across. And hardly we reached the further bank when the seasoned country folk with me asked me with scarce-concealed smiles:"

"We have to discard the past and, as one builds floor by floor, window by window, and the building rises, so do we keep shedding -- first, broken tiles, then proud doors, until, from the past, dust falls as if it would crash against the floor, smoke rises as if it were on fire, and each new day gleams like an empty plate. There is nothing, there was always nothing. It all has to be filled with a new, expanding fruitfulness; then, down falls yesterday as in a well falls yesterday's water, into the cistern of all that is now without a voice, without fire. It is difficult to get bones used to disappearing, to teach eyes to close, but we do it unwittingly. Everything was alive, alive, alive, alive like a scarlet fish, but time passed with cloth and darkness and kept wiping away the flash of the fish. Water water water, the past goes on falling although it keeps a grip on thorns and on roots. It went, it went, and now memories mean nothing. Now the heavy eyelid shut out the light of the eye and what was once alive is now no longer living; what we were, we are not. And with words, although the letters still have transparency and sound, they change, and the mouth changes; the same mouth is now another mouth; they change, lips, skin, circulation; another soul took on our skeleton; what once was in us now is not. It left, but if they call, we reply I am here, and we realize we are not, that what was once, was and is lost, lost in the past, and now does not come back."

"We have inherited this damaged life of peoples dragging behind them the burden of the condemnation of centuries, the most paradisiacal of peoples, the purest, those who with stones and metals made marvelous towers, jewels of dazzling brilliance - peoples who were suddenly despoiled and silenced in the fearful epochs of colonialism which still linger on."