A Dog Has Died

My dog has died. I buried him in the garden next to a rusted old machine.

Some day I'll join him right there, but now he's gone with his shaggy coat, his bad manners and his cold nose, and I, the materialist, who never believed in any romised heaven in the s!y "or any human being, I believe in a heaven I'll never enter. #es, I believe in a heaven "or all dogdom where my dog waits "or my arrival waving his "an$li!e tail in "riendshi .

Ai, I'll not s ea! o" sadness here on earth, o" having lost a com anion who was never servile. His "riendshi "or me, li!e that o" a orcu ine withholding its authority, was the "riendshi o" a star, aloo", with no more intimacy than was called "or, with no exaggerations% he never climbed all over my clothes "illing me "ull o" his hair or his mange, he never rubbed u against my !nee

li!e other dogs obsessed with sex.

&o, my dog used to ga'e at me, aying me the attention I need, the attention re(uired to ma!e a vain erson li!e me understand that, being a dog, he was wasting time, but, with those eyes so much urer than mine, he'd !ee on ga'ing at me with a loo! that reserved "or me alone all his sweet and shaggy li"e, always near me, never troubling me, and as!ing nothing.

Ai, how many times have I envied his tail as we wal!ed together on the shores o" the sea in the lonely winter o" Isla &egra where the wintering birds "illed the s!y and my hairy dog was jum ing about "ull o" the voltage o" the sea's movement% my wandering dog, sni""ing away with his golden tail held high, "ace to "ace with the ocean's s ray.

)oy"ul, joy"ul, joy"ul, as only dogs !now how to be ha with only the autonomy o" their shameless s irit. y

*here are no good$byes "or my dog who has died, and we don't now and never did lie to each other.

So now he's gone and I buried him, and that's all there is to it.

+ablo &eruda