Ode To Things

I love things with a wild passion,
extravagantly.
I cherish tongs,
and scissors;
I adore
cups,
hoops,
soup tureens,
not to mention
of course-the hat.
I love
all things,
not only the
grand,
but also the infinite-
ly
small:
the thimble,
spurs,
dishes,
vases.

Oh my soul,
the planet is radiant,
teeming with
pipes
in hand,
conductors
of smoke;
with keys,
saltshakers, and
well,
things crafted
by the human hand, everything -
the curves of a shoe,
fabric,
the new bloodless birth
of gold,
the eyeglasses,
nails,
brooms,watches,compasses, coins, the silken
plushness of chairs

Oh
humans
have constructed
a multitude of pure things:
objects of wood,
crystal,
cord,
wondrous
tables,
ships, staircases

I love
all things,
not because they
might be warm
or fragrant,
but rather because-
I don't know why,
because
the ocean is yours,
and mine:
the buttons,
the wheels,
the little
forgotten
treasures,
the fans
of feathery
love spreading
orange blossoms,
the cups, the knives,
the shears,
everything rests
in the handle, the contour,
the traces
of fingers,
of a remote hand
lost
in the most forgotten of regions of the ordinary obscured.

I pass through houses,
streets,
elevators, touching things;
I glimpse objects
and secretly desire
something because it chimes,
and something else because
because it is as yielding
as gentle hips,
something else I adore for its deepwater hue,
something else for its velvety depths.

Oh irrevocable
river
of things.
People will not
say that I only
loved
fish
or plants of the rain forest or meadow,
that I only
loved
things that leap, rise, sigh, and survive.
It is not true:
many things gave me completeness.
They did not only touch me .
My hand did not merely touch them,
but rather,
they befriended
my existence
in such a way
that with me, they indeed existed
and they were for me so full of life,
that they lived with me half-alive,
and they will die with me half-dead.

by Pablo Neruda
translated by Maria Jacketti and Dennis Maloney