Weak With the Dawn - Pablo Neruda

The day of the luckless, the pale day appears
with a cold heart-breaking smell, with its forces in grey,
with no bells on, dripping from everywhere:
it is a shipwreck in a void, surrounded by weeping.

For the moist shadow went from so many places,
from so many vain objections, from so many earthly halts
where it should have occupied even the design of roots,
from so much sharp form that defended itself.
I weep in the midst of what is invaded, amid the uncertain,
amid the growing savour, lending the ear
to the pure circulation, to the increase,
without direction giving way to what is approaching,
to what issues forth dressed in chains and carnations,
I dream, burdened with my moral remains.

There is nothing sudden, not light-hearted, nor with a proud form,
everything seems to be making itself with obvious poverty,
the light of the earth comes out of its eyelids
not like a bell's ringing, but more like tears:
the fabric of the day, its frail linen,
is good for a gauze for the sick, is good for waving
goodbye, in the wake of an absence:
it is the colour that wants only to replace,
to cover, to engulf, to subdue, to make distances.
I am alone with rickety materials,
the rain falls on me, and it is like me,
it is like me in its raving, alone in the dead world,
repulsed as it falls, and with no persistent form.

-- Pablo Neruda