Pastoral

by Pablo Neruda
translated by Ben Belitt

I go copying mountains and rivers and clouds:
I shake out my fountain pen, remark
on a bird flying upward
or a spider alive in his workshop of floss,
with no thought in my head; I am air,
I am limitless air where the wheat tosses,
and am moved by an impulse to fly, the uncertain
direction of leaves, the round
eye of the motionless fish in the cove,
statues that soar through the clouds,
the rain’s multiplications.

I see only a summer’s
transparency, I sing nothing but wind,
while history creaks on its carnival floats
hoarding medals and shrouds
and passes me by, and I stand by myself
in the spring, knowing nothing but rivers.

Shepherd-boy, shepherd-boy, don’t you know
that they wait for you?

I know and I know it: but here by the water
in the crackle and flare of cicadas,
I must wait for myself, as they wait for me there:
I also would see myself coming
and know in the end how it feels to me
when I come to the place where I wait for my coming
and turn back to my sleep and die laughing.

–Read at St. Lydia’s on July 10