Poets like St. John of the Cross and Juan Ramon Jimenez describe the single light shining at the center of all things. Neruda does not describe that light, and perhaps he does not see it. He describes instead the dense planets orbiting around it. As we open a Neruda book, we suddenly see going around us, in circles, like herds of mad buffalo or distracted horses, all sorts of created things; balconies, glacial rocks, lost address books, pipe organs, fingernails, notary publics, pumas, tongues of horses, shoes of dead people. -from a preface of the book