Oh Earth, Wait for Me by Pablo Neruda

Poem: Oh Earth, Wait for Me

Poet: Pablo Neruda

Date of Birth and Death: 12 July 1904 – 23 September 1973

Nationality: Chilean

Brief Biography: A diplomat for most of his life Pablo Neruda was a Nobel Prize–winning Chilean poet who was once called "the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language’.

Return me, oh sun,
to my wild destiny,
rain of the ancient wood,
bring me back the aroma and the swords
that fall from the sky,
the solitary peace of pasture and rock,
the damp at the river-margins,
the smell of the larch-tree,
the wind alive like a heart
beating in the crowded restlessness
of towering araucaria.

Earth, give me back your pure gifts,
the towers of silence which rose
from the solemnity of their roots,
I want to go back to being what I have not been,
and learn to go back from such deeps
that amongst all natural things
I could live or not live; it does not matter
to be one stone more, the dark stone,
the pure stone which the river bears away.

Pablo Neruda
Tr: Alaistair Reid



Pablo is one of my personal favourite poets and this piece sings to me as more and more I find myself drawn to living at peace with the natural world and also in peace with my own being as is right for me and not what others think it should be.

Near the Wall of a House by Yehuda Amichai

Yehuda Amichai (1924-2000)

Yehuda reminds the reader there is more to living than being in love, while love is indeed beautiful as a species we miss so much of life’s real beauty chasing just that one aspect of living.

Near the wall of a house painted
to look like stone,
I saw visions of God.

A sleepless night that gives others a headache
gave me flowers
opening beautifully inside my brain.

And he who was lost like a dog
will be found like a human being
and brought back home again.

Love is not the last room: there are others
after it, the whole length of the corridor
that has no end.

Yehuda Amichai 
Tr: Chana Block

If It Be Your Will by Leonard Cohen (1934-)

I love how Cohen’s words make this devotional poem reach out beyond any particular religion, although it was inspired by the Kol Nidre.

If it be your will
that I speak no more,
and my voice be still
as it was before;
I will speak no more,
I shall abide until
I am spoken for,
If it be your will.

If it be your will
that a voice be true,
from this broken hill
I will sing for you.
From this broken hill
all your praises they shall ring
if it be your will
to let me sing.

If it be your will
if there is a choice,
let the rivers fill,
let the hills rejoice.
Let your mercy spill
on all those burning hearts in hell,
if it be your will
to make us well.

And draw us near
and bind us tight,
all your children here,
in their rags of light;
in our rags of light,
all dressed to kill;
and end this night
if it be your will.

Leonard Cohen

Seduction Poem by Alison Croggon (1962- )

I have come across this poem so many times in recent weeks it now speaks so deeply to me - it is erotic, evocatively basic without the use of base language - and I am in love with it.


I want the slew of muscle, a less
cerebral meeting place; no word
but your male shout, the slurred
unpublic face and honest skin
crying to me, yes,
the mouthless, eyeless tenderness
crying to be let in.

Unbutton all your weight, like a bird
flying the night’s starred nakedness:
put down your grammatical tongue, undress
your correct and social skin:
come white and absurd
all your language one word
crying to be let in


Alison Croggon