The Enigmas

You have asked me what the crustaceans spin in their golden claws
and I reply: the sea knows.
You ask me, what does the sea squirt wait for in its transparent globe ? For what is it waiting?
I tell you that like you, it waits for the time.
You ask me, who does the giant kelp reach to embrace?
Inquire, ask me this again, at a certain hour, in a certain sea that I know.
You will undoubtedly ask me about the cursed ivory of the narwhale, and I will have to describe the manner in which the sea unicorn dies, harpooned and suffering.
Perhaps you will ask me about the untroubled feathers that tremble in the pure origins of the austral tide pools?
And about the jellyfish's crystalline construction--you are no doubt toying with this other problem, trying to unriddle it now?
Do you want to know the electric matter of the seafloor's spines?
The armed stalactite that cracks as it walks?
The lure of the anglerfish, its siren song drawn out in the depths like a thread in the water?

I want to tell you that the sea knows this
that life in its jewel boxes is wide as the sand
impossible to count and pure
and amid the fruits of bloodshed, time has polished smooth the pearl
filled the jellyfish with light
and untangled its bouquet of coral strands,
from a cornucopia of infinite iridescence.

I am nothing but the empty net that advances
human eyes, lifeless in this darkness
fingers accustomed to the triangle, the dimensions
of the orange's shy hemisphere

I lived like you, probing
the interminable star
and in my net during the night, I awoke, naked
the only thing caught, a fish trapped inside the wind

~Pablo Neruda

Traducido por una estudiante loca durante el infierno oscuro de sus examenes.