|
Lost in the forest,
I broke off a dark twig,
and lifted it's whisper to my thirsty lips:
maybe it was the voice of the rain crying,
a cracked bell, or a torn heart.
Something from far off it seemed
deep and secret to me, hidden by the earth,
a shout muffled by huge autumns,
by the moist half-open darkness of the leaves.
Wakening from the dreaming forest there,
the hazel-sprig sang under my tongue,
its drifting fragrance climbed up through
my conscious mind
As if suddenly the roots I had left behind cried out to me,
the land I had lost with my childhood---and I stopped,
wounded by the wandering scent.
Pablo Neruda
|