it is incredible how beautiful this part of the world looks, especially through the eyes of a stranger, after rain and fog rising out and at dusk, many cotton tail deers darting in and out.. you feel you are in an entirely different country...
there is indeed a magical quality to it all..
when i was a student, i had the habit of carrying a book of poems of Pablo Neruda with me and reading and reciting it when the appropriate moment arose.. Once someone said to me; This is the first time, on a date, someone is reading poems to me..
so you can imagine my surprise and my happiness when i found three of my favourite of Pablo Neruda's book of poems and i started reading them with all my heart.. pronouncing each word, enunciating with proper tone and feeling that sense of loss i had felt in many places.. Melbourne, Australia; Miami, Florida...
Who does not know Viente Poemas de amor...? Poema 20... on a night like this, i too loved her...
what triggered me off was that i was drinking a glass of white wine ( sauvignon blanc made in RSA by Penfolds).. memories of my days as a trainee doctor in Melbourne and a certain dr JT.. the poema 20 would always bring her to my mind..
How can not think of a great friend of mine with whom I had gone to Jamaica, Australia and Fiji islands.. ah such a long time ago and the poem was Josie Bliss !.. i remember her saying to me distinctly... if this poem is what you would use to remember me, please do me th favour of forgetting... i remember reading the poem to my brother while we were dining not too far from the river Irrawaddy.. Pablo Neruda was a consul in Rangoon and the passion shows through...
The third poem i read aloud tonight... a certain love poem called LOVE... once again my mind transformed itself as wind and passed through the tunnels of love and forgetting..
and i put down this on the paper..
I am just a traveller in this galaxy of stars who are carving out their oblivion in this endless sky.. that line for SY whom I had met recently , who would adore the lines of Pablo and if she doesnot, it would be her loss.. she is a star and if she is not careful, the world she would create would be filled with the silence of the darkness..
All the time I was reading the poems, my mind was fixated on just one person.. who has become more important to me than any one else, who fills my life with poems of infinite variety and strength..I wish her well, over the waves that separates us..
Pablo Neruda is about passion and love, sensuality and the universe, tenderness that can be found everywhere..
