BY PAUL NERUDA ODE TO THE DOG

ODE TO THE DOG

BY PAUL NERUDA

The dog asks me
And I don't answer
Jump, run in the field and ask me
Without speaking
And their eyes
it's two wet questions, two llamas
questioning liquids
and I don't answer
I don't answer because
I don't know, I can't anything.

At full field we go

man and dog

The leaves shine like
if someone
I would have kissed them
one by one,
rise from the ground
all oranges
to establish
small planetariums
in round trees
like the night, and greens,
and dog and man come on
smelling the world, shaking the clover,
through the countryside of Chile,
between the clear fingers of September.

The dog stops,
chase the bees,
the uneasy water jumps,
listen far away
barking
piss on a stone
and brings me the tip of his snout,
To me, as a gift.
It is its tender freshness,
the communication of his tenderness,
and there he asked me
with his two eyes,
why is it daytime, why night will come,
why spring
did not bring in your basket
nothing
for wandering dogs,
but useless flowers,
Flowers, flowers and flowers.
And so he asks
the dog
And I don't answer

Let's go
man and dog together
in the green morning,
for the exciting empty solitude
in that only us
we exist
this dog unit with dew
and the poet of the forest,
because there is no hidden bird,
not even the secret flower,
but trill and aroma
for two companions,
for two fellow hunters:
a humid world
by the distillations of the night,
a green tunnel and then
a meadow,
a gust of orange air,
the whisper of the roots,
life walking,
breathing, growing,
and the old friendship,
the joy
of being a dog and being a man
converted
in a single animal
that walks moving
six legs
and a tail
with dew.