Wait! Don’t go. Sharing a short wonderful writing on birds by Pablo Neruda. Check these beautiful little ones early morning at Camp Advait. Happy reading!
Now Let’s look for birds!
The tall iron branches in the forest,
The dense fertility on the ground.
The world is wet.
A dewdrop or raindrop shines,
A diminutive star among the leaves.
The morning time mother earth is cool.
The air is like a river which shakes
the silence.
It smells of rosemary, of space and roots.
Overhead, a crazy song.
It’s a bird.
How out of its throat smaller than a finger
can there fall the waters of its song?
Luminous ease!
Invisible power torrent of music in the leaves.
Sacred conversations!
Clean and fresh washed is this day resounding
like a green dulcimer.
I bury my shoes in the mud, jump over rivulets.
A thorn bites me and a gust of air like a crystal wave
splits up inside my chest.
Where are the birds?
Maybe it was that rustling in the foliage
or that fleeting pellet of brown velvet
or that displaced perfume?
That leaf that let loose cinnamon smell
– was that a bird?
That dust from an irritated magnolia
or that fruit which fell with a thump –
was that a flight?
Oh, invisible little critters
birds of the devil with their ringing
with their useless feathers.
I only want to caress them,
to see them resplendent.
I don’t want to see under glass
the embalmed lightning.
I want to see them living.
I want to touch their gloves of real hide,
which they never forget in the branches
and to converse with them sitting on my shoulders
although they may leave me like certain statues
undeservedly whitewashed.
Impossible.
You can’t touch them.
You can hear them like a heavenly
rustle or movement.
They converse with precision.
They repeat their observations.
They brag of how much they do.
They comment on everything that exists.
They learn certain sciences like hydrography.
and by a sure science they know
where there are harvests of grain.
