The poem “The Morning is Full of
Storm” by Pablo Neruda sets out to draw vividly with the brush of imagination
that which cannot be directly witnessed, namely, the wind. This mysteriously
invisible though powerful natural element moves about everywhere leaving its
mark on everything that comes its way: from the clouds that resemble
handkerchiefs being waved in its hands as they drift here and there, to the sound
the wind makes “above our loving silence”, to the trees, which, stirred by the
wind, gain the power of speech with a “language full of wars and songs”, to the
dead leaves swept across the ground by the wind’s
unseen broom, to the birds whose shooting flight is deflected by its
resisting energy, to the sea that is toppled as the wind knocks it over, and finally
to the fires whose flames lean sideways as the wind blows upon them.
