Sometimes Even Mermaids Lose Their Way

Here is my all-time favorite Pablo Neruda poem, Fable of the Mermaid and the Drunks (for those of you who remember the Il Postino film soundtrack featuring readings of Neruda poems by various celebrities, you'll recall that this one was read by Ethan Hawke).

Although Neruda ends it with the mermaid swimming towards death, I always took comfort in thinking she returned to her beloved ocean and, in "death", experienced a type of true Mermaid Rebirth.

All those men were there inside,

when she came in totally naked.

They had been drinking: they began to spit.

Newly come from the river, she knew nothing.

She was a mermaid who had lost her way.

The insults flowed down her gleaming flesh.

Obscenities drowned her golden breasts.

Not knowing tears, she did not weep tears.

Not knowing clothes, she did not have clothes.

They blackened her with burnt corks and cigarette stubs,

and rolled around laughing on the tavern floor.

She did not speak because she had no speech.

Her eyes were the colour of distant love,

her twin arms were made of white topaz.

Her lips moved, silent, in a coral light,

and suddenly she went out by that door.

Entering the river she was cleaned,

shining like a white stone in the rain,

and without looking back she swam again

swam towards emptiness, swam towards death.