Tonight I Can Write...about Walking Around

Remix:
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
It happens I am tired of being a man.
Write, for example, 'The night is shattered,
it happens when I go into the tailor's shops and movies.
The blue stars shiver in the distance
all shrivelled up, impenetrable, like a felt swan. (Oh look; someone else who takes a liking to the swan.)
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
The smell of barber shops make me sob out loud.

Ah, don't take too much offense to the butchered conglomerated mix of my two favored Neruda poems: "Tonight I Can Write" and "Walking Around." It intrigued me momentarily how the two poems, though they convey completely unrelated themes, coincide so well by line. The "saddest lines", though originally written about love lost (or love never truly had, depending on one's definition of love), could have just as easily been written about the weariness of being human in this life. Of course, again, this is open to perspective.

In "Tonight I Can Write...", Neruda explores the intriguing nature of love. When one considers the lines of his poem, he almost pokes fun at the fleeting and unrealistic expectation of "love". They loved each other. Sometimes. He loved her. Because of her "great still eyes." (Really? *raised eyebrow*) He loves her. That's certain. Well, maybe. And then... well...but, nope. He no longer loves her. But he did, in fact, love "her voice. her bright body. her infinite eyes." (Again with the eyes. At this point I think perhaps even I love her eyes. I'm not sure.) Sometimes. The only certainty throughout it all is that these were "the last verses" that he'd ever write for her. But then...maybe not.

The brilliance of "Walking Around" is a little more concrete. He is quite certain that he is tired of being a man, and as he describes, it is quite understandably so. Similar to Dario's "Sonatina," Neruda is speaking out against the expectations set forth regarding gender and societal roles. Aging before his time, he goes into the usual and typical "old man" gathering places "the tailor's shops and the movies", the same as those before him and the same as those will do long after he's returned to dust and "ash." Walking the same places, smelling the same sounds, doing the same things... He wants to know: where is the shock? Where is the mischief that wakens the boredom? Where is the refreshment that will generate "new"? Where is the relief from the mundane?

I do not know. Maybe I know. Yes, I'm certain I know. Or... not.
All I really know is that "forgotten sets of teeth in a coffee-pot" quite honestly scare the hell outta me.