there is no forgetting

There's No Forgetting (Sonata)

If you should ask me where I've been all this time
I have to say 'Things happen.'
I have to dwell on stones darkening the earth,
on the river ruined in its own duration:
I know nothing save things the birds have lost,
the sea I left behind, or my sister crying.
Why this abundance of places? Why does day lock
with day? Why the dark night swilling round
in our mouths? And why the dead?

Should you ask me where I come from, I must talk
with broken things,
with fairly painful utensils,
with great beasts turned to dust as often as not
and my afflicted heart.

These are not memories that have passed each other
nor the yellowing pigeon asleep in our forgetting;
these are tearful faces
and fingers down our throats
and whatever among leaves falls to the ground:
the dark of a day gone by
grown fat on our grieving blood.

Here are violets, and here swallows,
all things we love and which inform
sweet messages seriatim
through which time passes and sweetness passes.

We don't get far, though, beyond these teeth:
Why waste time gnawing the husks of silence?
I know not what to answer:
there are so many dead,
and so many dikes the red sun breached,
and so many heads battering hulls
and so many hands that have closed over kisses
and so many things that I want to forget.

Pablo Neruda
Posts tagged "Europe"

liquidnight:

Jean Dieuzaide

Communauté Emmaüs à Toulouse, 1956

From Jean Dieuzaide: Yan

liquidnight:

Henri Cartier-Bresson

Istanbul, 1965

From Henri Cartier-Bresson Photographer

liquidnight:

André Kertész

At the top of the Eiffel Tower

Paris, 1929

[From the Réunion des Musées Nationaux]

liquidnight:

Viktor Kolář

Ostrava, 1995

From Viktor Kolář: Ostrava

liquidnight:

Édouard Boubat

“Making the film En souriant à l’invisible

Paris, France, 1998

From Édouard Boubat: A Gentle Eye

liquidnight:

Toni Frissell

Portugal, 1946

From Toni Frissell: Photographs 1933-1967

liquidnight:

Viktor Kolář

Ostrava, 1994

From Viktor Kolář: Ostrava

luzfosca:

Artur Urbański

Łódź, Podwórko przy ulicy Tuwima (Lodz, Courtyard at Tuwima Street), 2001

From  Łódź Miasto w środku Europy (Lodz City in the middle of Europe) Book, page 27

liquidnight:

Alfred Eisenstaedt

A young couple enjoying lunch on the Right Bank of the Seine, just below Notre Dame, Paris, 1963

From Eisenstaedt: Remembrances

liquidnight:

Herbert List

Stairway to Heaven, Rome, 1949

From The Essential Herbert List: Photographs 1930-1972

liquidnight:

Willy Ronis

La Fenêtre

Paris, 1954

From Les chats de Willy Ronis

liquidnight:

John Gutmann

October, Berlin, 1933

From John Gutmann: The Photographer at Work