My eyes are all red and puffy because I've just cried like I've never cried before. Il Postino (The Postman) is an Italian film about a fisherman who becomes a postman and delivers letters to Pablo Neruda, a famous Chilean poet. No one cries in it, but it is so powerful and raw and moving and it made me cry buckets. There is so much emotion in there that can make you laugh and weep and both at the same time, and urgh, I'm just afraid my words will mar its beauty. It's in Italian for God's sake and look at the state I'm in.

Also, Mi Mancherai, my favourite track from Josh Groban's album (with Joshua Bell on the violin) was the main theme in the film. Now I realise what the Il Postino in brackets beside the title means.

Here is one of Pablo Neruda's poems, translated. The first stanza rolled after the film, before the credits.

Poetry

And it was at that age ... Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names,
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire,
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and
dr,
the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind.