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.
We need a new apologetic, geared to the needs of today, which keeps in mind that our task is not to win arguments but to win souls... Such an apologetic will need to breathe a spirit of humanity, that humility and compassion which understand the anxieties and questions of people.
They do not want to know that centralization is not only the death-knell of liberty, but also of health and beauty, of art and science, all these being impossible in a clock-like, mechanical atmosphere.
It may be decades until we know what living in a state of constant distraction will do to us.
I am far from denying that newspapers in democratic countries lead citizens to do very ill-considered things in common; but without newspapers there would be hardly any common action at all. So they mend many more ills than they cause.
America rejects bigotry. We reject every act of hatred against people of Arab background or Muslim faith America values and welcomes peaceful people of all faiths - Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu and many others. Every faith is practiced and protected here, because we are one country. Every immigrant can be fully and equally American because we're one country. Race and color should not divide us, because America is one country.
I learned to make my mind large, as the universe is large, so that there is room for contradictions.
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