Have strength

After so many things, after so many hazy miles,
not sure which kingdom it is, not knowing the terrain,


travelling with pitiful hopes,


and lying companions, and suspicious dreams,


I love the firmness that still survives in my eyes,


I hear my heart beating as if I were riding a horse,


I bite the sleeping fire and the ruined salt,
and at night, when darkness is thick, and mourning furtive,


I imagine I am the one keeping watch on the far shore


of the encampments, the traveller armed with his sterile defenses,


caught between growing shadows


and shivering wings, and my arm made of stone protects me.

—Pablo Neruda, from “Sonata and Destructions,”Twenty Poems (The Sixties Press, 1967)