Homage To Pablo Neruda

O Neruda, the twentieth century belongs to you. Your whole life is contained within it. Your poems aged like a precious wine over its decades, and they grew stronger, even as you did, in body and soul. If we placed your poems one by one on the ground like pavement stones, they would lead us to Isle Negra, where you lived with Mathilde a life of love and service, of passion and poetry. Your poems can abolish slavery where it still lurks, they can relate history minus the lies of the victors, they can create gardens whose flowers and flowering trees send forth a fragrance that summons lovers, they make birds swoop over our heads, they make landscapes that promote harmony and hope. Your name is a banner that reads in all languages: "Poetry is the Truth of Life." Our voices are cleansed reciting your poems, our hearts swell with pride carrying them within. O Neruda, the loneliness of this twenty-first century without your presence is unbearable. Speak through our voices, be present as the Spirit of the Age, the Angel of its Salvation.