Poor Creatures ~ From Estravagario by Pablo Neruda

                                        From: ‘Estravagario’

What it takes on this planet

to love each other in peace:

all the world examines the sheets,

all of them trouble your love.

And they say terrible things

about a man and a woman

who, after lots of vacillations,

and lots of deliberations,

do something incomparable,

fall together into one bed.

I ask myself if the frogs

stake out, sneeze at, themselves,

whether they whisper in ponds

against the outlaw frogs

against the joy of spawn.

I ask myself if the birds

make bird enemies

and if the bull listens to oxen

before he pays court to the cows.

Now the streets have eyes,

the parks have police,

the hotels have their spys,

the windows note down names,

troops and guns are sent out

resolute against love,

working incessantly

the throats and the ears,

and a guy and his girl

are forced to burst into flower

while fleeing on a bike.