Oneness

Oneness by Pablo Neruda

There's something dense, united, sitting in the background,

repeating its number, it's identical signal.

How clear it is that stones have handled time,

in their fine substance there's the smell of age,

and water the sea brings, salty and sleepy.

Just one thing surrounds me, a single motion:

the weight of rocks, the light of skin,

fasten themselves to the sound of the word night:

the tones of wheat, of ivory, of tears,

things made of leather, of wood, of wool

aging, fading, blurring,

come together around me like a wall.

I toil deftly, circling above my self,

like a raven above death, grief's raven.

I'm thinking, isolated in the vastness of the seasons,

dead center, surrounded by silent geography:

a piece of weather falls from the sky,

an extreme empire of confused unities

converges, encircling me.

{translated by Stephen Kessler}

Terry Cockburn, owner of Freeport Yoga Company, in Caye Caulker, Belize