House (Neruda)

The iPhone app that I used for this is called ToonPaint. When one takes a picture it renders things in this manner sort of like a faded color drawing. I think one might be able to manipulate the result but I usually like it the way it comes out. We are still neatening up this place in the Michigan woodlands, but also playing with our electronics now that we got the Invaluable Internet up and running. Usually S has the dachshund on his lap, but she decided to nap on the couch during this photo opp.

Here's a little more Neruda for tonight, and many other nights.


House

Perhaps this is the house in which I lived
when neither I, nor earth, existed,
when everything was moon, or stone, or shadow,
with the still light unborn.
This stone could then have been
my house, my windows, or my eyes.
This granite rose recalls
Something that lived in me, or I in it,
a cave, a universe of dreams inside the skull:
cup or castle, boat or birth.
I touch the rock's tenacious thrust,
its bulwark pounded in the brine
and I know that flaws of mine subsisted here,
wrinkled substances that surfaced
from the depths of my soul,
and stone I was, stone shall be, and for this
caress this stone which has not died for me:
it's what I was, and shall be---the tranquillity
of struggle stretched beyond the brink of time.

from Pablo Neruda; selected poems,a bilingual edition, edited by Nathaniel Tarn, HM, 1990, page 411

Notice the useful repetition of the word "stone" which is la piedra in Spanish. Also other words like granite and rock as well as castle and pounded carry forth this theme. Even the moon is rocky!