...and back to Neruda's poem "Casa".
For me it is a top poem. I love the piece. It is clear and simple and deep and broad . So uncluttered by cultural bias.
House (Casa)
Perhaps this is the house in which I lived
When neither I, nor earth, existed
When everything was moon or stone or shadow
With the still light unborn
This stone could then have been
My house, my windows, or my eyes.
This granite rose recalls
Something that lived in me, or I in it,
A cave, a universe of dreams inside the skull:
cup or castle, boat or birth.
I touch the rocks tenacious thrust,
It's bulwark pounded in the brine
And I know that flaws of mine subsisted here,
Wrinkled substances that surfaced
From the depths into my soul,
And stone I was, stone shall be, and for this
Caress this stone that has not died for me:
It's what I was, and shall be – the tranquility
Of struggle stretched beyond the brink of time.
I know this feeling,
I love this poem and in particular, these lines:
That's poetryThis stone could then have been
My house, my windows, or my eyes.
This granite rose recalls
Something that lived in me, or I in it,
A cave, a universe of dreams inside the skull:
…And stone I was, stone shall be, and for this
Caress this stone that has not died for me:
Matj