Entrance into wood

- Pablo Neruda

With scarce my reason, with my fingers,
with slow waters slow flooded,
I fall to the realm of forget-me-nots,
to a mourning air that clings,
to a forgotten room in ruins,
to a cluster of bitter love.
I fall into shadow, the midst
of things broken down,
I look at spiders, and graze on forests
of secret inconclusive wood,
I pass along damp uprooted fibers
to the live heart of matter and silence.
Smooth substance, oh drywinged rose,
in my sinking I climb your petals,
my feet weighed down with a red fatigue,
and I kneel in your hard cathedral
bruising my lips on an angel.
Here I am faced with your color of the world,
with your pale dead swords,
with your gathered hearts,
with your silent horde.
Here I am with your wave of dying fragrances
wrapped in autumn and resistance:
it is I embarking on a funeral journey
among your yellow scars:
it is I with my sourceless laments,
unnourished, wakeful, alone,
entering darkened corridors,
reaching your mysterious matter.
I see your dry currents moving,
broken-off hands I see growing,
I see your oceanic plants
creaking, shaken by night and fury,
and I feel leaves dying inwards,
amassing green materials
to your desolate stillness.
Pores, veins, circles of smoothness,
weight, silent temperature,
arrows cleaving to your fallen soul,
being asleep in your thick mouth,
dust of sweet pulp consumed,
ash full of snuffed-out souls,
come to me, to my measureless dream,
fall into my room where night falls
and incessantly falls like broken water,
and clasp me to your life, to your death,
to your crushed matter,
to your dead neutral doves,
and let us make fire, and silence, and sound,
and let us burn, and be silent, and bells.

from: The Essential Neruda.