Neruda And Vallejo: Selected Poems Part 11

como un camarero humillado, como una campana un poco ronca,

como un espejo viejo, como un olor de casa sola

en la que los huespedes entran de noche perdidamente ebrios,

y hay un olor de ropa tirada al suelo, y una ausencia de flores

-posiblemente de otro modo an menos melanclico-,

pero, la verdad, de p.r.o.nto, el viento que azota mi pecho,

las noches de substancia infinita cadas en mi dormitorio,

el ruido de un da que arde con sacrificio

me piden lo profetico que hay en m, con melancola

y un golpe de objetos que llaman sin ser respondidos

hay, y un movimiento sin tregua, y un nombre confuso.

THE ART OF POETRY.

Between shadows and clearing, between defenses and young girls,

having inherited an original heart, and funereal imagination,

suddenly pale, something withered in my face,

in mourning like a desperate widower every day of my life,

for every drop of invisible water I drink

in my sleepy way, and for every sound I take in shivering,

I have the same chilly fever, and the same absent thirst,

an ear coming into the world, an oblique anxiety,

as though robbers were about to arrive, or ghosts,

inside a seash.e.l.l with great and unchangeable depths,

like a humiliated waiter, or a bell slightly hoa.r.s.e,

like an aged mirror or the smell of an empty house

where the guests come in hopelessly drunk at night,

having an odor of clothes thrown on the floor, and no flowers,

-in another sense, possibly not as sad-

still, the truth is, the wind suddenly hitting my chest,

the nights with infinite substance fallen into my bedroom,

the crackling of a day hardly able to burn,

ask from me sadly whatever I have that is prophetic,

and there are objects that knock, and are never answered,

and something always moving, and a name that does not come clear.