the memoirs of a poet

I started to read the memoires and memories of the poet Pablo Neruda. (I confess I have lived)

And the confess starts with this beautiful foreword. When I was reading it the first time, I had to read it several times again and again. The had to absorbe each and every word of it. Since I read it in german and I want to share it with you, I translated it into english. I hope the beauty of the words will reach you.

The memoirs and memories often break off and are sometimes forgetful as life. The interruptions of sleep allows us to endure the daily work. Many of my memories are faded away in the act of appeals, have become dust like an irretrievably broken glass.

The memoirs of the writer's memoirs are not the memoirs of the poet. That one may have lived less, but more photographed and delighted us with the beauty of the details. This one gives us a gallery of ghosts shaken by the fire and shadow of his time.

Maybe I have not lived within me, perhaps I have lived the lives of others.

From what I leave in these pages, will - as in the tree-lined avenues of autumn and as during the grape harvest - remove the yellow leaves that are dying, and the grapes are raised in the holy wine.

My life is a life from all lifes: the lifes of the poet.

Pablo Neruda

Yours, Ailena