Flies Enter a Closed Mouth
The following is from a poem by Pablo Neruda that continues to touch my soul in a way that I cannot quite articulate. Again and again I have returned to it to capture something that seems to be missing, to lay hold of something that I never really had. This to me is the religious dimension of poetry (and all good literature). It brings you to a threshhold, as if you’re seconds away from release or transfiguration.
What we know comes to so little,
what we presume is so much,
what we learn, so laborious,
we can only ask questions and die.
Better save all our pride
for the city of the dead
and the day of the carrion:
there, when the wind shifts
through the hollows of your skull
it will show you all manner of
enigmatical things, whispering truths in the
void where your ears used to be.
