(no subject)

The Weary One


The weary one, orphan
of the masses, the self,
the crushed one, the one made of concrete,
the one without a country in crowded restaurants,
he who wanted to go far away, always farther away,
didn't know what to do there, whether he wanted
or didn't want to leave or remain on the island,
the hesitant one, the hybrid, entangled in himself,
had no place here: the straight-angled stone,
the infinite look of the granite prism,
the circular solitude all banished him:
he went somewhere else with his sorrows,
he returned to the agony of his native land,
to his indecisions, of winter and summer.

- Pablo Neruda.

If I were of the type to do so, I would put this next to Robert Service's "The Men Who Don't Fit In", in a collection of poems. Perhaps because they both manage to capture the regret of being unsettled. I am "the one without a country in crowded restaurants"; I'm from a completely different place every time I am asked, depending on where I am at that point, and it is always somewhere else. I keep running further, hoping that I'll find whateveritis that I don't know I'm looking for.

I love this poem.