Poetry Friday: Ode to the Lizard

I finished reading The Dreamer this week. It's a fictionalized biography of Pablo Neruda, and at the end there are some of Neruda's poems. I loved the book (here's my review) and I love this poem:



Ode to the Lizard
Pablo Neruda (translated by Margaret Peden)

On the sand
a
lizard
with a sandy tail.
Beneath
a leaf,
a leaflike
head.

From what planet,
from what
cold green ember
did you fall?
From the moon?
From frozen space?
Or from
the emerald
did your color
climb the vine?

On a rotting
tree trunk
you are
a living
shoot,
arrow
of its foliage.
On a stone
you are a stone
with two small, ancient
eyes -
eyes of the stone.
By the
water
you are
silent, slippery
slime.
To
a fly
you are the dart
of an annihilating dragon.

Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.