Covered and Bound

It has been a few months, and there has been so many things happening with Covered and Bound and I am happy to say it is poetry month. I will begin with a few of my favourites, starting with Pablo Neruda.
Born Ricardo Eliecer Neftali Reyes Basoalto in Southern Chile on July 12th, 1904
His life was charged with poetic and political activism.
His work reflected the political struggles of the left and the socio-historical developments in South America.
He won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1971 he died in 1973, on my birthday!

The White Mans Burden
Lost in the forest, I broke off a dark twig
and lifted its whisper to my thirsty lips:
maybe it was the voice of the rain crying,
a cracked bell, or a torn heart.

Something from far off it seemed
deep and secret to me, hidden by the earth,
a shout muffled by huge autumns,
by the moist half-open darkness of the leaves.
Wakening from the dreaming forest there, the hazel-sprig
sang under my tongue, its drifting fragrance
climbed up through my conscious mind

as if suddenly the roots I had left behind
cried out to me, the land I had lost with my childhood---
and I stopped, wounded by the wandering scent

Pablo Neruda