WALKING AROUND
after Pablo Neruda

It so happens that I am tired.
And it happens that I walk, and walk, and work
and love and am required to love, and eat,
and speak and must listen.
And because of this: I am tired. I bite my nails.

The electricity goes out, and I don’t take notice of it.
I sit in the dark, or I light candles. Sometimes it is too hard
to strike a match. Otherwise, I leave.

I come to your house and watch the windows
or look for your car. Sometimes I bring a flower,
sometimes I tear at the petioles of a neighbor’s rose bush.
The expected thorn, the long ride,
the darkened window of your bedroom.
The grit of the sidewalk.
The streetlight’s full moon.

When I leave, without seeing you, and also when I’ve been with you,
I walk away quickly. And because of this, I am tired.
Because I must look a straight line forward;
because I must put down foot, and then again foot;
because you are waiting, or are out;
know I am leaving or never knew I was here,
my body aches from stopping the turn.
Walking between nothing and something exhausts me.

It so happens the streetlight is burnt into my eyelids;
my nails are bitten to the quick.
When I am hungry, my thoughts turn to food,
even if it is wax.
Whether I go out or stay home,
there is always hunger in my overcoat.
Hunger in my shoes.

The candles in my bedroom have extinguished themselves.
It happens that I am tired, and I go home,
where there is no electricity, and I eat the candles cold
and finally sleep.

--

See Neruda's poem here. Robert Bly's translation here.