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Last night she came, livid, night-blue, wine-red: the tempest with her hair of water , eyes of cold fire- last night she wanted to sleep on earth. She came all of a sudden newly unleashed out of her furious planet, her cavern in the sky; she longed for sleep and made her bed: sweeping jungles and highways, sweeping mountains, washing ocean stones, and then as if they were feathers, ravaging pine trees to make her bed. She took the lightning from her quiver of fire, dropped thunderclaps like great barrels. All of a sudden there was a silence: a single leaf gliding on air like a flying violin- then, before it touched the earth, you took it in your hands, great storm, put all your winds to work blowing their horns, set the whole night galloping with its horses, all the ice whistling, the wild trees groaning in misery like prisoners, the earth moaning, a woman giving birth, in a single blow you blotted out the noise of grass or stars, tore the numbed silence like a handkerchief- the world filled with sound, fury and fire, and when the lightning flashes fell like hair from your shining forehead, fell like swords from your warrior's belt and when we were about to think that the world was ending, then, rain, rain, only rain, all earth, all sky, at rest, the night fell, bleeding to death on human sleep, nothing but rain, water of time and sky: nothing had fallen except a broken branch, an empty nest. With your musical fingers, with your hell-roar, your fire of volcanoes at night, you played at lifting a leaf, gave strength to rivers, taught men to be men, the weak to fear, the tender to cry, the windows to rattle- but when you prepared to destroy us, when like a dagger fury fell from the sky, when all the light and shadow trembled and the pines devoured themselves howling on the edge of the midnight sea, you, delicate storm, my betrothed, wild as you were, did us no wrong: but returned to your star and rain, green rain, rain full of dreams and seeds, mother of harvests rain, world-washing rain, draining it, making it new, rain for us men and for the seeds, rain for the forgetting of the dead and for tomorrow's bread- only the rain you left behind, water and music, for this, I love you storm, reckon with me, come back, wake me up, illuminate me, show me your path so that the chosen voice, the stormy voice of man may join and sing your song with you. Pablo Neruda |
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