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The book The House of the World has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and is now available on Amazon.

My Friend Pablo (Neruda)

I prefer to think
that Pablo did not sit down
and write poems at a desk.
Consult his dictionary.
Look off through the window
and make up words.
In my heart I see him
sitting in the rain,
soggy and cold,
laughing and crying,
and going under the eaves
watching it fall.

Asking where is the beautiful girl?
Does my mother watch me?
Why does life dissolve?
Whose hair do I smell?
What’s left of me that I want
to remember?
And he would go inside and sit in a corner
and the words would spill on a piece of paper.
Like a hand holding his,
and he would say,
the geography of me is so much ocean,
nothing can ever find me,
or hear me,
and a poem would be written
to be put in a bottle,
and cast into the sea for us to find.

Published inIndex of all Poems