It Is Born

by Pablo Neruda

Here I came to the very edge
where nothing at all needs saying,
everything is absorbed through weather and the sea,
and the moon swam back,
its rays all silvered,
and time and again the darkness would be broken
by the crash of a wave,
and every day on the balcony of the sea,
wings open, fire is born,
and everything is blue again like morning.

Contributed by John Delaney, who comments: From Neruda's beautifully illustrated "On the Blue Shores of Silence," this poem is short, powerful, and elegant. It is from his Isla Negra period and captures his endless fascination with the nearby ocean he chose to live with in his later years.