How Much Happens in a Day
In the course of a day we shall meet one another
But, in one day, things spring to life-
they sell grapes in the street,
tomatoes change their skin,
the young girl you wanted
never came back to the office.
They changed the postman suddenly.
The letters now are not the same.
A few golden leaves and it’s different;
this tree is now well off.
Who would have said that the earth
with its ancient skin would change so much?
It has more volcanoes than yesterday,
the sky has brand-new clouds,
the rivers are flowing differently.
Besides, so much has come into being!
I have inaugurated hundreds
of highways and buildings,
delicate, clean bridges
like ships or violins.
And so, when I greet you
and kiss your flowering mouth,
our kisses are other kisses,
our mouths are other mouths.
Joy, my love, joy in all things,
in what falls and what flourishes.
Joy in today and yesterday,
the day before and tomorrow.
Joy in bread and stone,
joy in fire and rain.
In what changes, is born, grows,
consumes itself, and becomes a kiss again.
Joy in the air we have,
and in what we have of earth.
When our life dries up,
only the roots remain to us,
and the wind is cold like hate.
Then let us change our skin,
our nails, our blood, our gazing;
and you kiss me and I go out
to sell light on the roads.
Joy in the night and the day,
and the four stations of the soul.
Pablo Neruda
THE SAME LANGUAGE
To speak the same language
is kinship and affinity,
yet a person stuck with those
he can’t confide in
is trapped like a prisoner
enchained by lack of understanding.
It is, indeed, ironic:
There are many people
from India and Turkey
who speak the same language,
while there are countless Turks
who really can’t understand one another.
The universal language is authentic insight.
To be one in heart is surely superior
to only speaking the same words.
Rumi
The first poem by Pablo Neruda is a poem I read to a friend and his family on the day he was dying. Pablo Neruda is intense and in the book of poetry from which this came I was hard pressed to find something ‘soothing’….when I read this one, which I had read many times before, it felt the most real. It felt like it had everything to do with where we were and what was happening…in a day, people are born and they die…so many things happen, but the ticking of the clock is just the same and the sun rises and sets just like the day before….
The second poem, by the great Persian poet and often quoted Rumi, is so simple and pure…..and true…words that last forever. How much and how little we have changed over the centuries and this poem, for me, is an affirmation of universal truth and oneness.