29 July, 2006
it made the hair raise up on my spine

so much has passed in the past week or so that is still impacted in my skull, still waiting for a way to be translated, someone else's words are going to have to mark this spot until they find a way out.

i'm not talking about personal cataclysm, here. though there was for one person, who won't be coming back.

no... there are other, more mundane and peculiar and comical things. but having just watched an older film that i thought i was going to be annoyed with, on this boring and humid night (Truly, Madly Deeply), this poem by Pablo Neruda was paraphrased, and i had to go seek out the rest of it...

...and it bears repeating... because it speaks for a lot of souls on this hot night.

Dead Woman

If suddenly you do not exist,
if suddenly you no longer live,
I shall live on.

I do not dare,
I do not dare to write it,
if you die.

I shall live on.

For where a man has no voice,
there, my voice.

Where blacks are beaten,
I cannot be dead.
When my brothers go to prison
I shall go with them.

When victory,
not my victory,
but the great victory comes,
even though I am mute I must speak;
I shall see it come even
though I am blind.

No, forgive me.
If you no longer live,
if you, beloved, my love,
if you have died,
all the leaves will fall in my breast,
it will rain on my soul night and day,
the snow will burn my heart,
I shall walk with frost and fire and death and snow,
my feet will want to walk to where you are sleeping, but
I shall stay alive,
because above all things
you wanted me indomitable,
and, my love, because you know that I am not only a man
but all mankind.

.