Pablo Neruda, Poet

Man dissolves into the ocean like a grain of salt.
Pablo Neruda.

Over the last couple of weeks I've been falling into Pablo Neruda's life, as presented by Adam Feinstein ... a great tome of a book, hardcover with 496 pages but I never considered not carrying it whenever I was tram or train traveling.

Today, it was all I could do not to cry great big messy tears as I read through the final weeks and days of Pablo's life on the train as we arrived in Brussels South ...

On Tuesday the 25th, at nine in the morning, once again the sad task began of taking the body out across the water that was flooding the entrance and the ground floor ... When we managed to get the coffin out, a considerable group of workers and students had gathered outside in the street, and I heard the first shouts: 'Comrade Pablo Neruda!' someone screamed and all the others answered: 'Present!'

The cortege left in a defiant column (any massive demonstration was, of course, forbidden [by the military authorities] ... and the column grew along the way. Arriving at the General Assembly along the Avenida de la Paz, the funeral became an impressive popular protest, the first since 11 September ... I confess that I was frozen with fear, because the people began singing the Internationale in a crescendo.

... Soldiers, armed to the teeth, surrounded the square opposite the cemetery and I sincerely believed that, in a matter of seconds, they would let off a round of machine-gun fire.

...And singing at the top of our voices, all of us crying, we entered General Cemetery. Perhaps the presence of so many foreign journalists saved our lives ...

And still the soldiers watched, their machine guns loaded. As Matilde noted later, 'What a police presence for the most peaceful man in the world, for a poet!'