Sexual Water

by Pablo Neruda

♥

 

Rolling in big solitary drops,

in drops like teeth,

in big, thick drops like marmalade and blood,

rolling in big drops,

the water falls,

like a sword made of drops,

like a tearing river of glass,

it falls biting,

striking the axis of symmetry, sticking to the seams of the soul,

breaking abandoned things, drenching the darkness.

 

It is only a breath, moister than weeping,

a liquid, a sweat, a nameless oil,

a sharp movement,

forming, thickening,

the water falls,

in big slow raindrops,

toward its sea, toward its dry ocean,

toward its waterless wave.

 

I see the vast summer, and a death rattle coming from a barn,

wineshops, locusts,

towns, stimuli,

rooms, girls

sleeping with their hands over their hearts,

dreaming of bandits, of fires,

I see ships,

I see marrow trees

bristling like mad cats,

I see blood, daggers and women's stockings,

and men's hair,

I see beds, I see corridors where a virgin screams,

I look at blankets and organs and hotels.

 

I see the silent dreams,

I let the final days come in,

and also the beginnings, and also the memories,

like an eyelid atrociously and forcibly held open

I am looking.

 

And then there is this sound:

a red noise of bones,

a clashing of flesh,

and yellow legs like merging spikes of wheat.

I listen among the smacks of kisses,

I listen, shaken between gasps and sobs.

 

I am looking, listening,

with half my soul upon the sea and half my soul upon the land,

and with both halves of my soul I look at the world.

 

And though I close my eyes and cover my heart over entirely,

I see a muffled waterfall

in big muffled raindrops.

It is like a hurricane of gelatin,

like a waterfall of sperm and jellyfish.

I see a turbid rainbow form.

I see its waters pass across my bones.

 

~

Done