different names for the same thing

sometimes

i don't get many things right the first time
in fact, i am told that a lot
now i know all the wrong turns, the stumbles and falls
brought me here

what if i'd been born fifty years before you
in a house on a street where you lived?
maybe i'd be outside as you passed on your bike
would i know?

and in a white sea of eyes
i see one pair that i recognize

next door there's an old man who lived to his nineties
and one day passed away in his sleep
and his wife; she stayed for a couple of days
and passed away

i'm sorry
i know that's a strange way to tell you that i know we belong
that i know

that i am
i am
i am
the luckiest.

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