Category: This and that

I like you in your silence because it is as if you were not there,
and you hear me from afar, and my voice does not touch you.
It is as if eyes have taken you away
and as if a kiss seals your mouth.

As all things are filled with my soul,
you emerge from those things filled with my soul.
Butterfly of dreams, you are like my soul,
and you are like a very sad word.

I like you in your silence and it is as if you were distant.
And it is as if you were complaining, cooing butterfly.
And you hear me from afar, and my voice does not reach you:
let me be quiet in your own silence.

Let me also speak to you with your silence
clear like a lamp, simple as a ring.
You are like the night, quiet and scattered in the heavens.
Your silence is that of a star, so distant and simple.

I like you in your silence because it is as if you were not there.
Distant and hurting, as if you were dead.
Then a word, a smile are enough.
And I am happy, happy it is not so.

~ Pablo Neruda
Poem #15

*Translated by Rob McBride

Note:  Language is very diverse and translations are very dynamic.  In particular, in this poem, the word “callar” can mean many different things, including: quiet, still and silence.  I have chosen “silence” because it fits best with my personal interpretation of the poem, which alludes in part to the special relationship I feel with those who read me.  Nevertheless, there are many other excellent translations available.

This is my humble attempt to pay homage the Pablo Neruda’s wonderful words.

“Hamlet” – Act 1, Scene 3

Polonius:

Yet here, Laertes? Aboard, aboard, for shame!
The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,
And you are stay’d for. There- my blessing with thee!
And these few precepts in thy memory
Look thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportion’d thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar:
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch’d, unfledg’d comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel; but being in,
Bear’t that th’ opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment. 
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are most select and generous, chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all- to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day, 
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow’st.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.  Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.

~ Billy Shakespeare
Macbeth

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

~ Robert Frost

“The poets and the writers of our time leave the words which create history.”

@RobMcBride

“Those who write the lines which mark our time create the history others will eventually find.”

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“The magic of a moment is not defined by the situation, rather by the limits of our imagination.”

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