What is born with me

I saw this poem over at Medusa's place yesterday and was just stunned by it.  I had not read it before.

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WHAT IS BORN WITH ME

—Pablo Neruda

I sing to the grass that is born with me

in this free moment, to the fermentations

of cheese, of vinegar, to the secret

spurt of the first semen, I sing

to the song of milk which now comes

in rising whiteness to the nipples,

I sing to the fertility of the stable,

to the fresh dung of great cows

from whose aroma fly multitudes

of blue wings, I speak

without any shift of what is happening now

to the bumblebee with its honey, to the lichen

in its soundless germination.

Like an everlasting drum

sounds the flow of succession, the course

from being to being, and I'm born, I'm born, I'm born

with all that is being born, I'm one

with growing, with the spread silence

of everything that surrounds me, teeming,

propagating itself in the dense damp,

in thread, in tigers, in jelly.

I belong to fruitfulness

and I'll grow while lives grow.

I'm young with the youthfulness of water,

I'm slow with the slowness of time,

I'm pure with the purity of air,

dark with the wine of night,

and I'll only be still when I've become

so mineral that I neither see nor hear,

nor take part in what is born and grows.

When I picked out the jungle

to learn how to be,

leaf by leaf,

I went on with my lessons

and learned to be root, deep clay,

voiceless earth, transparent night,

and beyond that, bit by bit, the whole jungle.

(translated from the Spanish by Alastair Reid)