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“In what language does rain fall over tormented cities?”

—Pablo Neruda, The Book of Questions
(Translated by William O’Daly)

“I have the impression of moving in the shadow of syllables, in regions before secrets, where language cannot yet answer the call of thought, in swamps where you risk sinking with every breath.”

—Edmond Jabès, The Book of Questions Vol. 1

“In what language does rain fall over tormented cities?” ”

—Pablo Neruda,The Book of Questions

“One rose is enough for the dawn.”

—Edmond Jabes | The Book of Questions

“Words stick to my flesh as to blotting paper. The world is illegible on the skin.”

—Edmond Jabès, The Book of Questions

“(The first phrases of a work are always full of hope. Doubt creeps in and blossoms on the way. At the end, there is double despair: that of the writer and that of the witness.)”

—Edmond Jabès, The Book of Questions: Volume I

If you could commit one crime and get away with it, what would you commit?

I  would probably commit robbery

XLIV | The Book of Questions

Where is the child I was,
still inside me or gone?

Does he know that I never loved him
and that he never loved me?

Why did we spend so much time
growing up only to separate?

Why did we both not die
when my childhood died?

And why does my skeleton pursue me
if my soul has fallen away? 

“Por qué en las épocas oscuras se escribe con tinta invisible? ”

—Pablo Neruda, El libro de las preguntas

LXIX

Do the thoughts of love fall

into extinct volcanoes?

Is a crater an act of vengeance

or a punishment of the earth?

With which stars do they go on speaking,

the rivers that never reach the sea?

- From The Book of Questions by Pablo Neruda

“And what importance do I have in the courtroom of oblivion? Which is the true picture of how the future will turn out? Is it the grain seed among its yellow masses? Or is it the bony heart, that delegate of the peach?”

—Pablo Neruda, The Book Of Questions

“No trace of blood remains where I have passed.
What could be more natural?  Only absence has the
power to endure, but its oblivion shapes the nega-
tive into a dazzling point, a sun beyond alliance,
beyond allegiance, beyond eternity.”

-Edmond Jabès, The Book of Questions: El, or, The last book

“Does autumn enter legally Or is it an underground season?”

—Pablo Neruda, The Book of Questions, LXXIII
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