Pablo Neruda

“I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul.”

“Of so much moon were your hips to me,of all the sun your deep mouth and its delight,of so much burning light like honey in the shade”

“Body of a woman, white hills, white thighs,you look like a world, lying in surrender.My rough peasant's body digs in youand makes the son leap from the depth of the earth.I was lone like a tunnel. The birds fled from me,and nigh swamped me with its crushing invasion.To survive myself I forged you like a weapon,like an arrow in my bow, a stone in my sling.But the hour of vengeance falls, and I love you.Body of skin, of moss, of eager and firm milk.Oh the goblets of the breast! Oh the eyes of absence!Oh the roses of the pubis! Oh your voice, slow and sad!Body of my woman, I will persist in your grace.My thirst, my boundless desire, my shifting road!Dark river-beds where the eternal thirst flowsand weariness follows, and the infinite ache.”

“You are like nobody since I love you.”

“So the freshness lives onin a lemon,in the sweet-smelling house of the rind,the proportions, arcane and acerb.”

“I was born anew, owner of my own darkness.”

“And one by one the nights between our separated cities are joined to the night that unites us.”

“Love, my territory of kisses and volcanoes.”

“I know you exist not just because your eyes flyand give light to things like an open window”

“It’s well known that he who returns never left”

“La heradera del dia destruida.(The heiress of the destroyed day.)”

“you, my friend, could be the smoke’s daughter,you who may not have known you were born of fire and rage,lightning over flaming lava etched your violet mouth,your sex in the scorched oak’s moss like a ring in a nest,your fingers there in the flames, your compact bodyrose from leaves of fire that make me recallthere were bakers in your family tree,you’re still the rainforest’s bread, ash from violent wheat,”

“And the heart sounds like a sour conch,calls, oh sea, oh lament, oh molten panic,scattered in the unlucky and disheveled waves:the sea reports sonorouslyon its languid shadows, its green poppies.”

“I love you as the plant that never blooms but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers; thanks to your love a certain solid fragrence risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body. and: No one can stop the river of your hands, your eyes and their sleepiness, my dearest. You are the trembling of time, which passes between the vertical light and the darkening sky. and: From the stormy archipelagoes I brought my windy accordian, waves of crazy rain, the habitual slowness of natural things: they made up my wild heart.”

“You, in bloom, heart, beloved,you are like the foliage of the sky over my eyesand I look at you lying on the earth”

“Escóndeme en tus brazospor esta noche sola,mientras la lluvia rompecontra el mar y la tierrasu boca innumerable.”

“With which stars do they go on speaking,the rivers that never reach the sea?”

“I cannot quit your love without dying.”

“I love all things, not only the grand but the infinitely small: thimble, spurs, plates, flower vases.....”

“By night, beloved, tie your heart to mineand let them both in dreams defeat the darkness”