It was at that age that poetry came in search of me.

I'm not me but living matter fermenting and forming its own shapes in the fruitfulness of every day.

And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

My duty moves along with my song: I am I am not: that is my destiny. I exist not if I do not attend to the pain of those who suffer: they are my pains. For I cannot be without existing for all, for all who are silent and oppressed, I come from the people and I sing for them: my poetry is song and punnishment.

He who has nothing—it has been said many times—has nothing to lose but his chains.

The days aren't discarded or collected, they are bees that burned with sweetness or maddened the sting: the struggle continues, the journeys go and come between honey and pain. No, the net of years doesn't unweave: there is no net. They don't fall drop by drop from a river: there is no river. Sleep doesn't divide life into halves, or action, or silence, or honor: life is like a stone, a single motion, a lonesome bonfire reflected on the leaves, an arrow, only one, slow or swift, a metal that climbs or descends burning in your bones.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her. Love is so short, forgetting is so long.