NERUDA ~ SISTEMA SOMBRÍO

System Of Gloom

From every one of these days black as old iron,

and opened up by the sun like big red oxen,

and barley kept alive by air and by dreams,

and suddenly and irremediably vanished,

nothing has taken the place of my troubled beginnings,

and the unequal measures pumping through my heart

are forged there day and night, all by themselves,

adding up to messy and miserable sums.

So that's how, like a lookout gone blind and senseless,

incredulous and condemned to a painful watch,

facing the wall where each day's time congeals,

my difference faces gather and are bound in chains

like large, heavy, faded flowers

stubbornly temporary, dead already.

• Pablo Neruda

Translation by Stephen Kessler

¯_(ツ)_/¯