Lost
in the Forest
Lost in the forest, I broke off a dark twig,
and lifted its whisper
to my thirsty lips:
maybe it was the voice
of the rain crying,
a cracked bell, or a
torn heart.
Something from far
off: it seemed
deep and secret to me,
hidden by the earth,
a shout muffled by
huge autumns,
by the moist half-open
darkness of the leaves.
Wakening from the
dreaming forest there, the hazel-sprig,
sang under my tongue,
its drifting fragrance
climbed up through my
conscious mind.
as if suddenly the
roots I had left behind
cried out to me, the
land I lost with my childhood
—and I stopped wounded
by the wandering scent.
-Pablo Neruda
from Cien
Sonetos de Amor, University of Texas Press, Austin. 1986.