Poetry by Pablo Neruda

And it was at that age ... Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't
know where
it came from, from winter or a river,
I don't know how or when,
no, they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.

translated by Alastair Reid

Taken from World, Poems on the Underground