Ode to Broken Things by Pablo Neruda

Things get broken  

at home  

like they were pushed  

by an invisible, deliberate smasher.  

It's not my hands  

or yours  

It wasn't the girls  

with their hard fingernails  

or the motion of the planet.  

It wasn't anything or anybody  

It wasn't the wind  

It wasn't the orange-colored noontime  

Or night over the earth  

It wasn't even the nose or the elbow  

Or the hips getting bigger  

or the ankle  

or the air.  

The plate broke, the lamp fell  

All the flower pots tumbled over  

one by one. That pot  

which overflowed with scarlet  

in the middle of October,  

it got tired from all the violets  

and another empty one  

rolled round and round and round  

all through winter  

until it was only the powder  

of a flowerpot,  

a broken memory, shining dust. 

And that clock 
whose sound 
was 
the voice of our lives, 
the secret 
thread of our weeks, 
which released 
one by one, so many hours 
for honey and silence 
for so many births and jobs, 
that clock also 
fell 
and its delicate blue guts 
vibrated 
among the broken glass 
its wide heart 
unsprung. 

Life goes on grinding up 
glass, wearing out clothes 
making fragments 
breaking down 
forms 
and what lasts through time 
is like an island on a ship in the sea, 
perishable 
surrounded by dangerous fragility 
by merciless waters and threats. 

Let's put all our treasures together 
-- the clocks, plates, cups cracked by the cold -- 
into a sack and carry them 
to the sea 
and let our possessions sink 
into one alarming breaker 
that sounds like a river. 
May whatever breaks 
be reconstructed by the sea 
with the long labor of its tides. 
So many useless things 
which nobody broke 
but which got broken anyway.