The Crescent of Silence is Brimmed - a Neruda collage

When I open the door of night,

the crescent of silence is brimmed.

It is midnight: all around me

death beats on a gong, black water

the screaming of birds in the rain.

Something shoves me toward damp houses, into dark

corners, into hospitals with bones flying out of the windows,

devoured by haze. All things that live

give some part of themselves to the air.

The big breathing encircles me

with its raddle of towering blossoms, mouths

with their teeth black at the root:

a kiss dusky with pitch.

 
 
Phrases and lines from Five Decades: Poems 1925-1970 Pablo Neruda, translated by Ben Belitt
Painting: The Water-Sprite and Ägir's Daughters by Nils Johan Olsson Blommér