nothing better to tell than the mistakes of a lifetime

I who wanted to talk 

of a century inside the web 

that is always my poem-in-progress, 

have found only myself wherever I looked 

and missed the real happening. 

With wary good faith 

I opened myself to the wind: the lockers, 

clothes-closets, graveyards, 

the calendar months of the year, 

and in every opening crevice 

my face looked back at me. 

 

The more bored I became 

with my unacceptable person, 

the more I returned to the theme of my person; 

worst of all, 

I kept painting myself to myself 

in the midst of a happening. 

What an idiot ( I said to myself 

a thousand times over ) to perfect all that craft 

of description and describe only myself, 

as though I had nothing to show but my head, 

nothing better to tell than the mistakes of a lifetime. 

 

Tell me, good brothers, 

I said at the Fishermen's Union, 

do you love yourselves as I do? 

The plain truth of it is: 

we fishermen stick to our fishing, 

while you fish for yourself ( said 

the fishermen ) : you fish over and over again 

for yourself, then throw yourself back in the sea. 

 

[Pablo Neruda {1904-1973} 'Me Again', from Five Decades : Poems 1925-1970, trans. from the Spanish by Ben Belitt]