unidad

There's something dense, united, sitting in the background,
repeating its number, its 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 honey,
fasten themselves to the sound of the word night:
the tones of wheat, of ivory, of tears,
aging, fading, blurring,
come together around me like a wall.

I toil deafly, circling above myself,
like a raven above death, grief's raven.
I'm thinking, isolated in the depths 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.

- Pablo Neruda