.

And How Long?

How much does a man live, after all?

Does he live a thousand days, or one only?

For a week, or for several centuries?

How long does a man spend dying?

What does it mean to say ‘for ever’?

Lost in this preoccupation,
I set myself to clear things up.

I sought out knowledgable priests,
I waited for them after their rituals,
I watched them when they went their ways
to visit God and the Devil.

They wearied of my questions.
They on their part knew very little.
They were no more than administrators.

Medical men received me
in between consultations,
a scalpel in each hand,
saturated in aureomycin,
busier each day.
As far as I could tell from their talk,
the problem was as follows:
it was not so much the death of a microbe—
they went down by the ton,
but the few which survived
showed signs of perversity.

They left me so startled
that I sought out the grave-diggers.
I went to the rivers where they burn
enormous painted corpses,
tiny bony bodies,
emperors with an aura
of terrible curses,
women snuffed out at a stroke
by a wave of cholera.
There were whole beaches of dead
and ashy specialists.

When I got the chance
I asked them a slew of questions.
They offered to burn me.
It was all they knew.

In my own country the dead
answered me, between drinks:
‘Get yourself a good woman
and give up this nonsense.’

I never saw people so happy.

Raising their glasses they sang
toasting health and death.
They were huge fornicators.

I returned home, much older
after crossing the world.

Now I ask questions of nobody,

But I know less every day.

.

Pablo Neruda