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
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