Neftali Reyes

It has just come to my attention that the most widely-read poet of the 20th century, Neftali Reyes, had a most difficult childhood.  Fascinated by nature, emotion, and humanity, the young boy was weak in the eyes of his father.  His father wanted him to be a doctor or a lawyer.  He made his son swim through massive waves in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Chile in order to strengthen his muscles.  He burned countless notebooks that his son spent hours filling in backyard bonfires.  He never approved of his son's passion.  Eventually, Neftali Reyes went to University and changed his name to Pablo Neruda so that his father would never be shamed by him, and would never know that he was actually writing, and would write, for the rest of his tremendous life.

...Let us look for secret things

somewhere in the world,

on the blue shores of silence,

or where the storm has passed,

rampaging like a train.

There the faint signs are left,

coins of time and water,

debris, celestial ash

and the irreplaceable rapture 

of sharing in the labour

of solitude and the sand...

~On the Blue Shores of Silence, Poems of the Sea~ Pablo Neruda