Today’s poem, El Mar by Pablo Neruda, has been chosen by Ms. Carr. Click here to view the Spanish language original text and links to readings.

The Sea (English translation)

I need the sea because it teaches me:
I don’t know if I learn music or consciousness: I don’t know if it’s a single wave or deep depth or a hoarse voice or a shining
suggestion of ships and Pish.
The fact is that even when I’m asleep
in some magnetic mode I move
in the university of waves.

It’s not only the crushed shells
like some shivering planet
participating in a gradual death, no,fromthefragmentIreconstructtheday, from one grain of salt the stalactite
and from one spoon the immense god.
What it taught me before I keep! It’s air, incessant wind, water and sand.

It seems insignificant to a young man that came here to live with his own Pire yet the pulse that rose
then fell into its abyss,
the sputtering blue cold,
the gradual fading of a star,
the gentle unfolding of the wave
wasting snow with its foam,
the still power, out there, resolute
like a stone shrine in the depths,
replaced my territory in which was growing hardening sorrow, mounds of oblivion
and my life changed suddenly:
I gave my commitment to pure movement.