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Walking Around
Pablo Neruda 1904 – 1973

It so happens I am sick of being a man.

And it happens that I walk into tailorshops and movie houses
dried up, waterproof, like a swan made of felt
steering my way in a water of wombs and ashes.

The smell of barbershops makes me break into hoarse sobs.

The only thing I want is to lie still like stones or wool.
The only thing I want is to see no more stores, no gardens,
no more goods, no spectacles, no elevators. Born Ricardo Eliecer Neftalí Reyes
Basoalto in southern Chile on July 12,
1904, Pablo Neruda led a life charged
It so happens I am sick of my feet and my nails with poetic and political activity.
and my hair and my shadow.
It so happens I am sick of being a man. About Pablo Neruda>

Still it would be marvelous

to terrify a law clerk with a cut lily, Themes
or kill a nun with a blow on the ear. Body
It would be great Despair
to go through the streets with a green knife
letting out yells until I died of the cold. Sign up for Poem-a-
I don’t want to go on being a root in the dark,
Day
insecure, stretched out, shivering with sleep, * indicates required
going on down, into the moist guts of the earth, Email Address *
taking in and thinking, eating every day.

I don’t want so much misery.

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I don’t want to go on as a root and a tomb,
alone under the ground, a warehouse with corpses,
half frozen, dying of grief.

That’s why Monday, when it sees me coming

with my convict face, blazes up like gasoline,
and it howls on its way like a wounded wheel,
and leaves tracks full of warm blood leading toward the night.

And it pushes me into certain corners, into some moist houses,

into hospitals where the bones fly out the window,
into shoeshops that smell like vinegar,
and certain streets hideous as cracks in the skin.

There are sulphur-colored birds, and hideous intestines

hanging over the doors of houses that I hate,
and there are false teeth forgotten in a coffeepot,
there are mirrors
that ought to have wept from shame and terror,
there are umbrellas everywhere, and venoms, and umbilical cords.

I stroll along serenely, with my eyes, my shoes,

my rage, forgetting everything,
I walk by, going through office buildings and orthopedic shops,
and courtyards with washing hanging from the line:
underwear, towels and shirts from which slow
dirty tears are falling.

"Walking Around" from Neruda & Vallejo: Selected Poems, by Pablo Neruda and translated by
Robert Bly (Boston: Becon Press, 1993). Used with permission of Robert Bly.

More by this poet

Ode to My Socks One Hundred Love Sonnets: [Body of a woman, white
Maru Mori brought me XVII [I don’t love you as if hills, white thighs]
you were a rose]
a pair I don’t love you as if you were a rose Body of a woman, white hills, white
of salt, topaz, thighs,
of socks when you surrender, you stretch out
or arrow of carnations that like the world.
Pablo Neruda
propagate fire:
2016 Pablo Neruda
2016
Pablo Neruda
2022

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