Pablo Neruda: And how long?

How long does a man live, after all?
Does he live a thousand days, or one only? 
A week, or several centuries?
How long does a man spend dying? 
What does it mean to say 'for ever'?

Lost in these preoccupation 
I set myself to clear things up.

I sought out knowledgeable priests. 
I waited for them after their rituals, 
I watched them when they went their ways 
to visit God and the Devil.

They wearied of my questions.
They on their part knew very little; 
they were no more than administrators.

Medical men received me
in between consultations,
a scalpel in each hand,
saturated in aureomycin,
busier each day.
As far as I could tell from their talk, 
the problem was as follows:
it was not so much the death of a microbe —
they went down by the ton —
-but the few which survived 
showed signs of perversity.

They left me so startled
that I sought out the gravediggers. 
I went to the rivers where they burn
enormous painted corpses,
tiny bony bodies,
emperors with an aura
of terrible curses,
women snuffed out at a stroke 
by a wave of cholera.
There were whole beaches of dead 
and ashy specialists.

When I got the chance
I asked them a slew of questions. 
They offered to burn me; 
it was the only thing they knew.

In my own country the undertakers 
answered me, between drinks: 
'Get yourself a good woman 
and give up this nonsense.'

I never saw people so happy.

Raising their glasses they sang, 
toasting health and death. 
They were huge fornicators.

I returned home, much older 
after crossing the world.

Now I question nobody.

But I know less every day.

Translation by Alastair Reid