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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

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Posts tagged "Photojournalism"

liquidnight:

Lewis W. Hine

Child in a Doorway, circa 1910s

From Kids at Work: Lewis Hine and the Crusade Against Child Labor

liquidnight:

W. Eugene Smith

Cathedral Turned Makeshift WWII Hospital, Philippines, 1944

“There are no atheists in foxholes.” Every culture in the world seems to have its version of this saying, which reflects the desperate need for hope and protection that are unavailable to men under fire except as a kind of faith. Here, the symbolism is explicit: this makeshift military hospital was set up in 1944, in an 18th century cathedral on the Philippine island of Leyte. Between thick walls, the wounded lay in cots as far up as the altar rail, while surgeons operated in the baptistry with the help of battery-powered lights. In the text accompanying this photograph by W. Eugene Smith, LIFE reported that “the wounded groaned a little, but mostly they lay quiet and stared at the church’s pale blue ceiling.”

From The Face of Mercy - A Photographic History of Medicine at War

liquidnight:

Esther Bubley - Willie and Gene Bishop, newlywed farmhands, having dinner, 1945 From Esther Bubley: On Assignment

liquidnight:

Hans Wild

Spires of St. Paul’s Cathedral seen through the archway of a smoldering ruin after a Nazi incendiary bomb attack on the city.

London, December 1940

[From the LIFE magazine Photo Archive]

liquidnight: Lee Miller The daughter of the Burgomaster of Leipzig suicided with her parents as the allies took the city, Leipzig, April 1945. From Lee Miller’s War

liquidnight:

Allan Grant

Swingers

Acrobat and actor, Russ Tamblyn on the beach with movie actress Venetia Stevenson.

Venice Beach, California, August 1955

[From the LIFE magazine Photo Archive]