One day I fell like a stone
upon the California coast,
on my own and out of luck.
Morning came, a yellow whiplash,
and evening a gust of wind.
Night came like an immaculate
bowl overflowing wih stars and
newess.O pregnant sky, a blue sculpture's
trembling breast above
Mexico's borders,
and on the shore
alone there with
only the wayfarer's sadness,
a withered stick all alone,
wring out and blistered,
washed up on California's
sinister salt shore
by the tide's whim.Suddenly the voice of a violin,
thin and hungry
floated on the evening air
like a stray dog's howling,
it was someone else's loneliness
loose upon the sand.
It mourned for me, it sought me out,
It was my companion,
it was mankind howling.I sought that violin at night,
I searched street by pitch-black street
went house by weathered house
star by star.
It faded, and fell silent,
then suddenly surged,
a flare,
in the brackish night.
It was a pattern of incediary sound,
a spiral of musical contours
and I went on searching
street by street
for the dark violin's lifeline,
the source submerged in silence.
Finally, there he was,
at the entrance to a bar:
a man and his hungry violin.The last drunk weaved homeward
to a bunk on board a ship,
and violated tables shrugged
off empty glasses.
Nobody left waiting,
and nobody was on the way.
The wine had left for home,
the beer was sound asleep,
and in the doorway
soared
the violin with it's ragged companion,
it soared over the lonely night,
on a solitary scale
sounding of silver and complaint,
a single theme that wrung
from the sky
wandering fire, comets, and troubadors,
and I played my violin
half asleep,
held fast in the estuary's mouth,
the strings
giving birth to those desolate cries,
the wood worn smooth by the
plunging of many fingers.
I honored the smoothness, the feel
of a perfect instrument, perfectly assembled.
That hungry man's violin was
like family to me,
like kin,
and not just because of its sound,
not just because it raised
its howling to the angry stars,
no: because it had grown up
learning
how to befriend lost souls
and sing songs to wandering strangers.(Oda al violin de California... Por: Pablo Neruda)
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