Pablo Neruda

Leave Me a Place Underground

Leave Me a Place Underground - meaning Summary

A Private Subterranean Refuge

The speaker asks for a hidden, underground refuge — a labyrinth where they can withdraw from the visible world and its useless passions. They recognize that no one can grant this literal place, yet imagine escaping everyday life into a mute, stone silence and a "metallic and slumbering" state. The poem expresses a longing to transcend surface experience, even through a metaphorical death or radical interior retreat into elemental calm.

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Leave me a place underground, a labyrinth, where I can go, when I wish to turn, without eyes, without touch, in the void, to dumb stone, or the finger of shadow. I know that you cannot, no one, no thing can deliver up that place, or that path, but what can I do with my pitiful passions, if they are no use, on the surface of everyday life, if I cannot look to survive, except by dying, going beyond, entering into the state, metallic and slumbering, of primeval flame?

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