The Sea
I need the sea because it teaches me.
I don’t know if I learn music or awareness,
if it’s a single wave or its vast existence,
or only its harsh voice or its shining
suggestion of fishes and ships.
The fact is that until I fall asleep,
in some magnetic way I move in
the university of the waves.
It’s not simply the shells crunched
as if some shivering planet
were giving signs of its gradual death;
no, I reconstruct the day out of a fragment,
the stalactite from the sliver of salt,
and the great god out of a spoonful.
What it taught me before, I keep. It’s air
ceaseless wind, water and sand.
It seems a small thing for a young person,
to have come here to live with his own fire;
nevertheless, the pulse that rose
and fell in its abyss,
the crackling of the blue cold,
the gradual wearing away of the star,
the soft unfolding of the wave
squandering snow with its foam,
the quiet power out there, sure
as a stone shrine in the depths,
replaced my world in which were growing
stubborn sorrow, gathering oblivion,
and my life changed suddenly:
as I became part of its pure movement.
– Pablo Neruda –
~~~~~~~~~~~
The Sea Is Everything
The sea is everything.
It covers seven tenths of the terrestrial globe.
Its breath is pure and healthy.
It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely,
for he feels life stirring on all sides.
The sea is only the embodiment of a supernatural and
wonderful existence.
It is nothing but love and emotion;
it is the Living Infinite.
– Jules Verne –
~~~~~~~~~~~
Photo by Matt Powers on Unsplash
Neruda’s “The Sea” translation by Alastair Reid
