The Song of Despair

The memory of you
emerges from the
night around me.
The river mingles its
stubborn lament with
the sea.
Deserted like the
wharves at dawn.
It is the hour of
departure, oh deserted
one!
Cold flower heads are
raining over my heart.
Oh pit of debris, fierce
cave of the
shipwrecked.
In you the wars and
the flights
accumulated.
From you the wings of
the song birds rose.
You swallowed
everything, like
distance.
Like the sea, like time.
In you everything sank!
It was the happy hour
of assault and the kiss.
The hour of the spell
that blazed like a
lighthouse.
Pilot’s dread, fury of a
blind diver,
turbulent drunkenness
of love, in you
everything sank!
In the childhood of mist
my soul, winged and
wounded.
Lost discoverer, in you
everything sank!
You girdled sorrow, you
clung to desire,
sadness stunned you,
in you everything sank!
I made the wall of
shadow draw back,
beyond desire and act,
I walked on.
Oh flesh, my own
flesh, woman whom I
loved and lost,
I summon you in the
moist hour, I raise my
song to you.
Like a jar you housed
the infinite tenderness,
and the infinite oblivion
shattered you like a jar.
There was the black
solitude of the islands,
and there, woman of
love, your arms took
me in. ...

There were thirst and
hunger, and you were
the fruit.
There were grief and
the ruins, and you were
the miracle.
Ah woman, I do not
know how you could
contain me
in the earth of your
soul, in the cross of
your arms!
How terrible and brief
was my desire of you!
How difficult and
drunken, how tensed
and avid.
Cemetery of kisses,
there is still fire in your
tombs,
still the fruited boughs
burn, pecked at by
birds.
Oh the bitten mouth,
oh the kissed limbs,
oh the hungering teeth,
oh the entwined
bodies.
Oh the mad coupling of
hope and force
in which we merged
and despaired.
And the tenderness,
light as water and as
flour.
And the word scarcely
begun on the lips.
This was my destiny
and in it was the
voyage of my longing,
and in it my longing fell,
in you everything sank!
Oh pit of debris,
everything fell into you,
what sorrow did you
not express, in what
sorrow are you not
drowned!
From billow to billow
you still called and sang.
Standing like a sailor in
the prow of a vessel.
You still flowered in
songs, you still broke in
currents.
Oh pit of debris, open
and bitter well.
Pale blind diver, luckless
slinger,
lost discoverer, in you
everything sank!
It is the hour of
departure, the hard
cold hour
which the night
fastens to all the
timetables.
The rustling belt of the
sea girdles the shore.
Cold stars heave up,
black birds migrate.
Deserted like the
wharves at dawn.
Only the tremulous
shadow twists in my
hands.
Oh farther than
everything. Oh farther
than everything.
It is the hour of
departure. Oh
abandoned one.

- Pablo Neruda