François-Nicolas Chifflart, "Meditations" (1865)

                                               

Nobody is missing from the garden. Nobody is here:

only the green and black winter, the day

waking from sleep like a ghost,

a white phantom in cold garments

climbing the steps of a castle. It's an hour

when no one should arrive. Just a few drops

of chilly dew keep falling

from the bare branches of winter

and you and I in this circle of solitude,

invincible and alone, waiting

for no one to arrive, no, nobody will come

with a smile or a medal or a budget

to make us an offer or ask for anything.

This is the hour

of fallen leaves, their dust

scattered over the earth, when

they return to the depths of being and not being

and abandon the gold and the greenery,

until they are roots again,

and again, torn down and being born,

the rise up to know the spring.

O heart lost

inside me, in this man's essence,

what bountiful change inhabits you!

I am not the culprit

who has fled or turned himself in:

misery could not exhaust me!

Your own happiness can grow bitter

if you kiss it every day,

and there is no way of freeing oneself

from the sunlight except to die.

What can I do if the star chose me

to flash with lightning, and if the thorn

guided me to the pain of so many others?

What can I do if every movement

of my hand brought me closer to the rose?

Should I beg forgiveness for the winter,

the most distant, the most unattainable

for that man who used to seek out the chill

without anyone suffering because of his happiness?

And if somewhere on those roads

—distant France, numerals of fog—

I return to the extent of my life:

a lonely garden, a poor district,

and suddenly this day equal to all others

descends the stairs that do not exist

dressed in irrisistible purity,

and there is the odor of sharp solitude,

of humidity, of water, of being born again:

what can I do if I breathe my own air,

why will I feel wounded to death?

PABLO NERUDA (1904-1973). "Jardín de invierno/Winter Garden", 2002. Washington: Copper Canyon Press.