Pablo Neruda
Horses
From the window I saw the horses.
I was in Berlin, in winter. The light
was without light, the sky without sky.
The air white like wet bread.
And from my window a vacant arena,
bitten by the teeth of winter.
Suddenly, led by a man,
ten horses stepped out into the mist.
Hardly had they surged forth, like flame,
than to my eyes they filled the whole world,
empty till then. Perfect, ablaze,
they were like ten gods with wide pure hoofs,
with manes like a dream of salt.
Their rumps were worlds and oranges.
Their color was honey, amber, fire.
Their necks were towers
cut from the stone of pride,
and behind their transparent eyes
energy raged, like a prisoner.
And there, in the silence, in the middle
of the day, of the dark, slovenly winter,
the intense horses were blood
and rhythm, the animating treasure of life.
I looked, I looked and was reborn: without knowing it,
there, was the fountain, the dance of gold, the sky,
the fire that revived in beauty.
I have forgotten that dark Berlin winter.
I will not forget the light of the horses.
Spanish; trans. Stephen Mitchell
Pablo Neruda, Spanish; trans. Stephen Mitchell, Full Woman, Fleshy Apple, Hot Moon: Selected Poems of Pablo Neruda by Neruda, HarperCollins, 1999.