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.
But by the time that I had nothing left, I myself was the lightest thing of all for fate to get rid of.
This was a Golden Age, a time of high adventure, rich living and hard dying... but nobody thought so. This was a future of fortune and theft, pillage and rapine, culture and vice... but nobody admitted it. This was an age of extremes, a fascinating century of freaks... but nobody loved it.
When you look at food as an ethical issue in the Christian tradition, you don't find very much about it. You don't find, as you do in the Jewish or Islamic or Hindu traditions, a lot of restrictions saying you can eat this but you can't eat that.
Let us praise the noble turkey vulture: No one envies him; he harms nobody; and he contemplates our little world from a most serene and noble height.
April 27. Incapable of living with people, of speaking. Complete immersion in myself, thinking of myself. Apathetic, witless, fearful. I have nothing to say to anyone - never.
Being African didn't mean anything to me until later in my life.
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