No Forgetting

No forgetting by Pablo Neruda

 

Translated by Morgan Pelot

If you all asked me where I have been
I must say – it happens
I should speak of the ground that’s as dark as stone 
The river that has been destroyed:
I don’t know  anything without the things the birds lost,
 the sea left behind or my sister crying.
Why so many regions, why a day
joined with another day? Why a black night
 becomes accumulated in the mouth? Why so many dead?
If you ask me from where I come, I have to speak
with broken things,
with so many bitter utensils,
with great beasts, many rotten
and with my grieving heart.

These are not memories that have been healed
 and the yellow pigeon that sleeps in oblivion,
 but faces with tears,
 fingers in the throat,
 and what has fallen from the leaves:
the darkness of a day spent,
a day with our sad blood fed

Here are violets, swallow,
all whatever we love and appears
in sweet cards of long tails
by where they pass the sweet time

But they don’t penetrate most of those teeth,
they don’t bite the coverings that silence builds,

Because I don’t know what to answer:
There are so many dead,
And so many levees that the red sun left
and so many heads that beat the ships,
and so many hands that have locked kisses,

And so many things that I want to forget.