Don’t Go Far Off
Don't go far off, not even for a day, because --
because -- I don't know how to say it: a day is long
and I will be waiting for you, as in an empty station
when the trains are parked off somewhere else, asleep.
Don't leave me, even for an hour, because
then the little drops of anguish will all run together,
the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift
into me, choking my lost heart.
Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve on the beach;
may your eyelids never flutter into the empty distance.
Don't leave me for a second, my dearest,
because in that moment you'll have gone so far
I'll wander mazily over all the earth, asking,
Will you come back? Will you leave me here, dying?
Pablo Neruda, Chilean
poet, was born on this date,
1904. He was
awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1971,
and died in
1973, age 69
You
can find a bio of Pablo Neruda at this link:
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1971/neruda-bio.html.
Remember the Song of
Solomon in the Hebrew Scriptures? Neruda’s poem is close kin to it.
God is vast and utterly
beyond our comprehension … so all the mystics of every religious tradition say.
The other side of the coin, from our charmingly limited human nature? God is
the Mythical, the Archetypal Lover, the One who shows us the path to Life on
the path of Love and Compassion.
I hope you will savour
Neruda’s wonderful love poem today … and may I suggest that it is a parable or
a “symbol” of the love between that great Mystery we call “God” and ourselves.
But the speaker of this
poem isn’t one of us human beings.
It is God.
God needs us to exist.
And, as we properly understand the deep mystery of God, we need Her properly to
comprehend our own reality and destiny.
Brian+
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