Night Cats (a return to Friday poetry blogging)

Night Cats

A cat has how many stars,
they asked me in Paris,
and I, tiger by tiger, began
to observe the constellations:
because two watching eyes
are pulsations of God
in the cat's cold eyes
and two lightning bolts in the tiger's.

But a star is the tail
of a cat bristled in the sky
and a blue stone tiger is
blue night of Antofagasta.

Gray night of Antofagasta
rose over the corners
of a lofty defeat
over earth's exhaustion
and it's a fact, the desert
is the other face of night,
so infinite, unexplored,
like the non-existence of stars.

And between two goblets of the soul
the minerals sparkle.

I never saw a cat in the desert:
but the truth is, I never
slept with anybody
but the sands of night,
the circumstances of the desert
or the stars in space.

Because they aren't and they are
my humble discoveries.

--Pablo Neruda