ode

Ode to a Watch in the Night
(ODA A UN RELOJ EN LA NOCHE)
by Pablo Neruda

In the night, on your hand,
my watch shines as a glowworm
I listen to its ticking:
a dry whisper
coming

from your invisible hand.
Your hand then comes back to my breast in the darkness
to gather my dream and its rhythm.

The watch
relentlessly cuts at time
with its little saw teeth.
As in a forest
there fall
fragments of wood
tiny scraps, pieces
of foliage or nests,
without changing the silence,
without changing the fresh darkness;

so
relentlessly, the watch saws,
from your invisible hand,
moments, moments,
and minutes
fall like leaves,
fibers of ruined time,
small black plums.

As in the forest,
we smelled roots,
the water in some place fell away in drops
like fat, wet grapes
A tiny mill
grinds the night,
the shadow murmurs
falling from your hand
and filling the earth.
Dust,
earth, distance
grinds and grinds
on your hand.

I put
my arm
beneath your invisible neck,
beneath its tepid weight
and in my hand
the time falls,
the night falls,
little noises
of wood and the forest,
from divided night,
from fragments of shadow,
from water that falls and falls:

then
the dream falls
upon the watch and upon
your two sleeping hands,
falling like dark water
in the forest,

from the watch
to your body
making from you countries,
dark water,
time that falls
and flows within us.

And so the night passes,
shadows and space, earth
and time,
a thing that runs and falls
and passes away.
And so all the nights
go on earth,
leaving nothing but a vague
dark odor,
a leaf falls,
a drop falls
on the earth
quenching its sound,
the woods, the waters,
the meadows,
the bells,
the eyes
all sleep.

I hear your breathing,
my love:

let us sleep