To Sadness

by Pablo Neruda


Sadness, I need
your black wing,
so much sun, so much honey in the topaz,
each ray smiles
in the meadow
and everything is round light on all sides of me,
everything is an electric bee in the heights.
And so
give me
your black wing,
sister sadness:
I need the sapphire to be
extinguished sometimes and the oblique
mesh of the rain to fall,
the weeping of the earth:
I want
that shattered beam in the estuary,
the vast house in darkness,
and my mother
searching
for paraffin
and filling the lamp
until it gave not light but a sigh.

The night wasn't born.

The day was sliding
toward its provincial graveyard,
and between the bread and the shadow
I remember
myself
in the window
looking out at what didn't exist,
what wasn't happening,
and a black wing of water that came
over that heart which there perhaps
I forgot forever, in the window.

Now I miss
the black light.

Give me your slow blood,
cold
rain,
give me your astonished flight!
Give me back
the key
of the door that was shut,
destroyed.
For a moment, for
a short lifetime,
take the light from me and let me
feel myself
lost and miserable,
trembling among the threads
of twilight,
receiving into my soul
the trembling
hands
of
the
rain.

Translated by Stephen Mitchell