Pablo Neruda Poem by Robert Rorabeck

The dwarves went down into the earth—The dragon rose and
Stretched its curtains to a purple world:
The earth and the world was ours and hers, though she wouldn't
Awaken—as the pilgrims shivered,
For upon the earth they were shaken—
But it was a beautiful plane they lived and feasted upon,
And there were so many types of birds—
With wings of the colors of a school desk—and I loved to think about
Kissing her,
Until my day did come—It spread out in a thousand pinwheeled angles
Speeding up the mouths of the field laborers across the canal:
And I skipped school and thought of her—
Snow white and beautiful, done on her pills—the dark shadows
Of mermaids underneath her,
The unicorns in the alders and holy in the thickets—
She kept her sisters like the numbers around her—
And little of roman candles and bottle rockets who made love in
The canals—
Until the days were lost upon her—and the monuments who were
Supposed to be were fed up upon her—
And she lay like a silver trinket into the shallow streams,
Breathing steadily for
Pablo Neruda.