Chronos

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In Santiago, Chile
The days are interminably long:
Several eternities in a day.

Like the vendors of seaweed
Travelling on the backs of mules:
You yawn – you yawn again.

Yet the weeks are short
The months go racing by
And the years have wings.

~Nicanor Parra~

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Nicanor Parra was a beautiful poet, often overshadowed by his more famous compatriot and comrade, Pablo Neruda.

Born in a small town of southern Chile in 1914, Nicanor Parra “has taught us – has forced us – to come to poetry with new eyes. More than that, he has made us look with new eyes at all the things of this world : airplanes and pencils, crankshafts and flies and pianos. He has redefined the poem in such a way as only a few have done. And in doing so he has redefined the world in which the poem is written and the hand that writes it …”

There was this one line in a poem I read by him as a teenager which has stayed with me forever

In America liberty is a statue

unfortunately, I just can’t seem to find the poem now.

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