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October 30, 2002
“Walking Around” by Pablo Neruda
It so happens I am sick of being a man.
And it happens that I walk into tailorshops and movie houses
dried up, waterproof, like a swan made of felt
steering my way in a water of wombs and ashes.
The smell of barbershops makes me break into hoarse sobs.
The only thing I want is to lie still like stones or wool.
The only thing I want is to see no more stores, no gardens,
no more goods, no spectacles, no elevators.
It so happens that I am sick of my feet and my nails
and my hair and my shadow.
It so happens I am sick of being a man.
Still it would be marvelous
to terrify a law clerk with a cut lily,
or kill a nun with a blow on the ear.
It would be great
to go through the streets with a green knife
letting out yells until I died of the cold.
I don’t want to go on being a root in the dark,
insecure, stretched out, shivering with sleep,
going on down, into the moist guts of the earth,
taking in and thinking, eating every day.
I don’t want so much misery.
I don’t want to go on as a root and a tomb,
alone under the ground, a warehouse with corpses,
half frozen, dying of grief.
That’s why Monday, when it sees me coming
with my convict face, blazes up like gasoline,
and it howls on its way like a wounded wheel,
and leaves tracks full of warm blood leading toward the night.
And it pushes me into certain corners, into some moist houses,
into hospitals where the bones fly out the window,
into shoeshops that smell like vinegar,
and certain streets hideous as cracks in the skin.
There are sulphur-colored birds, and hideous intestines
hanging over the doors of houses that I hate,
and there are false teeth forgotten in a coffeepot,
there are mirrors
that ought to have wept from shame and terror,
there are umbrellas everywhere, and venoms, and umbilical cords,
I stroll along serenely, with my eyes, my shoes,
my rage, forgetting everything,
I walk by, going through office buildings and orthopedic shops,
and courtyards with washing hanging from the line:
underwear, towels and shirts from which slow
dirty tears are falling.
Posted by pogo at October 30, 2002 12:52 PM
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Comments
thanks for posting this… ive been searching the net for awhile, and this is probably my favorite translation of neruda’s “walking around”
Posted by: tina on February 6, 2003 3:28 PM
this is a great poem by pablo neruda. He’s so incredibly amazing. His sense of metaphor is astounding :) I still think my favorite is “if you forget me”
Posted by: Forrest on April 7, 2003 3:35 PM
this is a great poem by pablo neruda. He’s so incredibly amazing. His sense of metaphor is astounding :) I still think my favorite is “if you forget me”
Posted by: Forrest on April 7, 2003 3:35 PM
yeah, he’s definitely one of my favorites, too. i just started reading a collection of interviews of latin american writers put out by the paris review. i’m reading neruda’s now. i’m torn because i just don’t want to put it down, and i want to savor it and make it last as long as i can.
thanks, y’all, for stopping by!
Posted by: tam on April 14, 2003 5:16 PM
yeah it is a great poem and i am doing his piece of poetry for my literature class
Posted by: marissa keehn on September 27, 2003 9:41 AM
we had studied about Pablo neruda’s poem “walking around” and i believe that though it is dreamlike it talks about a very inhumane society, which i believe still exist these days. Pablo Neruda is one of the best surrealist rtist i have ever read!!!
Posted by: roxanne shobe on December 6, 2003 1:39 AM
this was tha weirdest poem i hav ever read. o well! ;)
Posted by: tuts on January 19, 2004 1:37 PM
I think Pablo is basically writing about his hometown of Parral, Chile. It was a very small, suburban town when he was growing up there and it was not industrialized at all. As soon as industrialization started swinging through Chile his town Parral became like every other commercial town across the globe…full of shops and concrete. He misses the way it used to be and is reflecting on his resentment of the industrialization. Well, thats my two cents anyway.
Posted by: Hawthorne on February 23, 2004 12:19 AM
Walking around - Neruda’s reaction to Rangun,India, where he was consul. He had diplomatic posts between 1927 and 1932 in various Asiatic cities. He probably felt incredible culture-shock in addition to feeling isolated and alienated. There is an existential expression of life in this poem as well.
Posted by: maria on May 17, 2004 10:23 AM