Don't Ask

(This is a re-translation of a poem by Pablo Neruda)

Don't Ask  

My heart is heavy

knowing so many things

as if carrying a sack of dark stones,

or as if rain was falling ceaslessly

in my memory.

Don't ask me about it

I know nothing about it

I don't know what happened.

Nobody else knew either, so,

I went on in a fog, 

thinking that nothing had happened

looking for fruit in the streets

thoughts in the wastelands...

and here's what I know:

everyone was right, and I've

been asleep for so long.

So, I add to to my heart

not just stones but shadow

not just shadow but blood.

That's how it is, boy,

and also how it is not.

Because, in spite of it all,

I'm alive and my health is excellent.

I grow my soul and my nails,

walk through barbershops,

come and go through frontiers,

take my stance.

But, if you want to know more,

and if you hear sadness barking

close to my house, it is a lie:

only love is real. Sadness 

is time wasted.

So, of what I remember,

and what I don't, of what I know,

and what I knew, and what I lost 

on the road, among so many things lost,

of the dead that did not hear me, and,

perhaps wanted to see me, just touch me,

here, and you will see how my heart trembles,

a sack of dark stones