And I watch my words from a long way off. They are more yours than mine. They climb on my old suffering like ivy.
Interpretation
The speaker acknowledges that their words are influenced by past experiences and shared pain, making them more of a collective expression than individual ownership.
In this quote, Pablo Neruda reflects on the nature of language and expression, suggesting that words are not solely owned by the speaker. Instead, they carry the weight of collective experiences and shared suffering, growing and intertwining like ivy on a wall. This metaphor highlights the interconnectedness of human experience and the way personal pain can shape the way we express ourselves.
In practice
In a poetry reading to illustrate how personal experiences shape our words.
Perhaps this war will pass like the others which divided us leaving us dead, killing us along with the killers but the shame of this time puts its burning fingers to our faces. Who will erase the ruthlessness hidden in innocent blood?
I want to see the thirst inside the syllables I want to touch the fire in the sound: I want to feel the darkness of the cry. I want words as rough as virgin rocks.β - Verb.
Only do not forget, if I wake up crying it's only because in my dream I'm a lost child hunting through the leaves of the night for your hands.
And here am I, budding among the ruins with only sorrow to bite on, as if weeping were a seed and I the earth's only furrow.
Once more I am the silent one who came out of the distance wrapped in cold rain and bells: I owe to earth's pure death the will to sprout.
I learned about life from life itself, love I learned in a single kiss and could teach no one anything except that I have lived with something in common among men.
She thought it was part of the hardship of her life that there was laid upon her the burthen of larger wants than others seemed to feel β that she had to endure this wide hopeless yearning for that something, whatever it was, that was greatest and best on this earth.
If the greatest god is the stillness all the motions add up to, then we must ineluctably be included.
When all other rights are taken away, the right of rebellion is made perfect.
Memory is fiction. We select the brightest and the darkest, ignoring what we are ashamed of, and so embroider the broad tapestry of our lives.
The Experience of Sacred Space makes possible the founding of the world: where the sacred Manifests itself in space, the real unveils itself, the world comes into existence.
I think every person either inherits or eventually makes up their own idea of what they are and who they are and what caused the world to be, and it seems to me that these stories of creation myth, adopted by different cultures - most of them are less insightful than the stories made up by individual poets and writers.
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