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My Favorite Poems

I am so exhausted today.

Today was a long day and I am still recovering from a cold. But it made me think of the best things of my early life one of the finest was the poem my grandfather used to read to me. He told me a story, that every single woman I meet or would meet was perfect in the very fact that she was a woman and to love her as she was, to reinforce this philosophy he would tell me this poem in English:

Naked you are as simple as one of your hands,
smooth, terrestrial, minimum, round, transparent,
you have lines of moon, apple ways, undressed
you are thin as a bear stalk of wheat.

Naked you are blue like the night in Cuba,
you have vines and stars in your hair,
Naked you are enormous and yellow like summer in a church of Gold.

Naked you are small like one of your nails, curved, subtle, rosy
until the day is born and you put on your subterranean clothes
of the world like as if in a long tunnel of masks and work:
by the end of the day your clarity is extinguished,
gets dressed, it tears the pages out of each day
and again it returns to be a naked hand.

Pablo Neruda

And Again in Spanish:

Desnuda eres tan simple como una de tus manos,
lisa, terrestre, mínima, redonda, transparente,
tienes líneas de luna, caminos de manzana,
desnuda eres delgada como el trigo desnudo.

Desnuda eres azul como la noche en Cuba,
tienes enredaderas y estrellas en el pelo,
desnuda eres enorme y amarilla como
el verano en una iglesia de oro.

Desnuda eres pequeña como una de tus uñas,
curva, sutil, rosada hasta que nace el díay te metes
en el largo subterráneo del mundo
como en un largo túnel de trajes y trabajos:
tu claridad se apaga, se viste,
se deshojay otra vez vuelve a ser una mano desnuda.

Pablo Neruda

Whenever someone insults me, I am reminded of the fact that human beings are perfect in as much as they are what they were meant to be.

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