My favourite...
From October Fullness, Pablo Neruda:


Little by little, and also in great leaps,
life happened to me,
and how insignificant this business is.
These veins carried my blood,
which I scarcely ever saw,
I breathed the air of so many places
without keeping a sample of any.
In the end, everyone is aware of this:
nobody keeps any of what he has,
and life is only a borrowing of bones.
The best thing was learning not to have too much
either of sorrow or of joy,
to hope for the chance of a last drop,
to ask more from honey and from twilight.

Perhaps it was my punishment.
Perhaps I was condemned to be happy.
Let it be known that nobody crossed my path without sharing my being.


I, the River
by Erik Paulsson

A raindrop I fell from the sky,
onto the slopes of an ancient rock
older than our memory of the moon.
There I merged with silver tears,
recounting dreams from an ocean of forgotten souls.

In unity we become a puddle,
glistening in the cold morning dawn.
A chorus of voices we grew,
until gravity invited us on a journey.

Stones turned to earth,
grey turned to brown,
and green,
and red,
our offering colours the world.

Other travelers from the earth and sky
join our march,
soldiers of life,
blood of this body,
pulsing with each heartbeat of the wind.

Over moss and weed we tumble
and sing our melodies,
in harmony with the precious day,
and the solitude of night.
The moon weeps for our passing,
the sun soothes its melancholy heart.

Gathering we become a symphony
playing music written by the stars,
we rise to a crescendo,
and crash to the earth,
with a torrent of brass and timpanis.

This river I have become,
the conscience of all that came before,
pages from the book of time,
filled with the prose of countless ghosts,
yet still unwritten.

I cannot be stopped,
for my will is for the sea.
I am called there as it always must be,
for when I join the mighty ocean,
I shall be no more,
becoming one with the great mother
from whose womb we were all born.

And somewhere a drop of rain,
again falls from heaven.

-Erik

I wrote that sitting by the sea in Chile, in the same place Pablo Neruda wrote his poetry. It was a beautiful day.