B E B E R E

Summary

I am pleased at having taken on
so many obligations - in my life
most curious elements accumulated:
gentle ghosts which undid me,
an insistent mineral labor,
an inexplicable wind which ruffled me,
the stab of some wounding kisses, the hard reality
of my brothers,
my insistent need to be always watchful,
my impulse to be myself, only myself
in the weakness of self-pleasuring.
That is why - water on stone - my life was always
singing its way between joy and obligation.

-Pablo Neruda, "Fully Empowered"