Pablo Neruda and his Selected Poems

Looking at a collection of poetry, "Neruda- Selected Poems." It's a bilingual Spanish and English edition published by Houghton Miffin. There's a lot of music and poetry in the poems, though since they lack a classical format, strictly speaking they are not poetry. They do not rhyme and do not have standard line lengths and rhymthmic schemes.

Look at a poem called "There's No Forgetting" or "No Hay Olvido (Sonata)." Like Lyndon would say, it reeks of baby boomer cynicism. It starts:

If you should ask me where I've been all this time;
I have to say 'things happen."

It's almost as if he really meant to say in the second line "Shit happens." Still there are lots of images in the poem of birds and flowers, so I like it just the same, especially being able to see the original Spanish with the English translation.