In depression, Pablo Neruda writes from outside of himself, and definitely outside of his personality. He writes from the stones themselves. His words take on the color and substance of stone.

Leave me an underground, a labyrinth
to resort to later when, without eyes,
without touch, in the emptiness,
I might want to come back to life
or to mute rock or the hand of the shadow.

I know how – not you, anyone, or anything else –
to put myself in this place, on this path
but what will I do with these pitiful desires
since they didn’t work out on the outside
of the usual life,
and what if I don’t seek, personally, to live on
but to die on, to be part
of a metallic and dormant state,
of passionate beginnings.

Depression requires getting out of the prison of the mind, so that even the stones whisper and gurgle with language like a subterranean river beneath all our logic. And if you can tap into this murmur, then, perhaps you may find yourself blooming again:

of clear almonds

I go back to my family,

to my obligations,

more ignorant than the day I was born,

more simple each day,

each stone

Blackest depression, daily work, and when you least expect it, grace and transformation – neither one without the other.