Pablo Neruda - The Complete Memoirs: Expanded Edition

Under the volcanoes, beside the snow-capped mountains, among the huge lakes, the fragrant, the silent, the tangled Chilean forest My feet sink down into the dead leaves, a fragile twig crackles, the giant rauli trees rise in all their bristling height, a bird from the cold jungle passes over, flaps its wings, and stops in the sunless branches. And then, from its hideaway, it sings like an oboe The wild scent of the laurel, the dark scent of the boldo herb enter my nostrils and flood my whole being The cypress of the Guaitecas blocks my way This is a vertical world: a nation of birds, a plenitude of leaves I stumble over a rock, dig up the uncovered hollow, an enormous spider covered with red hair stares up at me, motionless, as huge as a crab A golden carabus beetle blows its mephitic breath at me, as its brilliant rainbow disappears like lightning Going on, I pass through a forest of ferns much taller than I am: from their cold green eyes sixty tears splash down on my face and, behind me, their fans go on quivering for a long time A decaying tree trunk: what a treasure! Black and blue mushrooms have given it ears, red parasite plants have covered it with rubies, other lazy plants have let it borrow their beards, and a snake springs out of the rotted body like a sudden breath, as if the spirit of the dead trunk were slipping away from it Farther along, eachtree stands away from its fellows They soar up over the carpet of the secretive forest, and the foliage of each has its own style, linear, bristling, ramulose, lanceolate, as if cut by shears moving in infinite ways A gorge; below, the crystal water slides over granite and jasper A butterfly goes past, bright as a lemon, dancing between the water and the sunlight Close by, innumerable calceolarias nod their little yellow heads in greeting High up, red copihues (Lapageria rosea) dangle like drops from the magic forests arteries The red copihue is the blood flower, the white copihue is the snow flower A fox cuts through the silence like a flash, sending a shiver through the leaves, but silence is the law of the plant kingdom The barely audible cry of some bewildered animal far off The piercing interruption of a hidden bird The vegetable world keeps up its low rustle until a storm churns up all the music of the earth.

Anyone who hasnt been in the Chilean forest doesnt know this planet.

I have come out of that landscape, that mud, that silence, to roam, to go singing through the world.

Ill start out by saying this about the days and the years of my childhood: the rain was the one unforgettable presence for me then. The great southern rain, coming down like a waterfall from the Pole, from the skies of Cape Horn to the frontier. On this frontier, my countrys Wild West, I first opened my eyes to life, the land, poetry, and the rain.

I have traveled a lot, and it seems to me that the art of raining, practiced with a terrible but subtle power in my native Araucana, has now been lost. Sometimes it rained for a whole month, for a whole year. Threads of rain fell, like long needles of glass snapping off on the roofs or coming up against the windows in transparent waves, and each house was a ship struggling to make port in the ocean of winter.

This cold rain from the south of the Americas is not the sudden squall of hot rain that comes down like a whip and goes on, leaving a blue sky in its wake. The southern rain is patient and keeps falling endlessly from the gray sky.

The street in front of my house has turned into a huge sea of mud. Out the window, through the rain, I watch a cart stuck in the middle of the street. A peasant wearing a heavy black woolen cloak beats his oxen; the rain and the mud are too much for them.

We used to walk to school, along the unpaved sidewalks, stepping from stone to stone, despite the cold and the rain. The wind carried off our umbrellas. Raincoats were expensive, I didnt like gloves, my shoes got soaked through. Ill always remember the wet socks hanging next to the brazier, and lots of shoes, steaming like toy locomotives. Then the floods would come and wash away the settlements along the river, where the poor lived. The earth shook and trembled. At other times, a crest of terrifying light appeared on the sierras: Mt. Llaima, the volcano, was stirring.