The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems

Te amo sin saber cómo, ni cuándo, ni de dónde, te amo directamente sin problemas ni orgullo: así te amo porque no sé amar de otra manera, sino así de este modo en que no soy ni eres, tan cerca que tu mano sobre mi pecho es mía, tan cerca que se cierran tus ojos con mi sueño.

October Fullness” Little by little, and also in great leaps, life happened to me, and how insignificant this business is. These veins carried my blood, which I scarcely ever saw, I breathed the air of so many places without keeping a sample of any. In the end, everyone is aware of this: nobody keeps any of what he has, and life is only a borrowing of bones. The best thing was learning not to have too much either of sorrow or of joy, to hope for the chance of a last drop, to ask more from honey and from twilight. Perhaps it was my punishment. Perhaps I was condemned to be happy. Let it be known that nobody crossed my path without sharing my being. I plunged up to the neck into adversities that were not mine, into all the sufferings of others. It wasn’t a question of applause or profit. Much less. It was not being able to live or breathe in this shadow, the shadow of others like towers, like bitter trees that bury you, like cobblestones on the knees. Our own wounds heal with weeping, our own wounds heal with singing, but in our own doorway lie bleeding widows, Indians, poor men, fishermen. The miner’s child doesn’t know his father amidst all that suffering. So be it, but my business was the fullness of the spirit: a cry of pleasure choking you, a sigh from an uprooted plant, the sum of all action. It pleased me to grow with the morning, to bathe in the sun, in the great joy of sun, salt, sea-light and wave, and in that unwinding of the foam my heart began to move, growing in that essential spasm, and dying away as it seeped into the sand.

In the end, everyone is aware of this: nobody keeps any of what he has, and life is only a borrowing of bones.

Fable of the Mermaid and the Drunks" All those men were there inside, when she came in totally naked. They had been drinking: they began to spit. Newly come from the river, she knew nothing. She was a mermaid who had lost her way. The insults flowed down her gleaming flesh. Obscenities drowned her golden breasts. Not knowing tears, she did not weep tears. Not knowing clothes, she did not have clothes. They blackened her with burnt corks and cigarette stubs, and rolled around laughing on the tavern floor. She did not speak because she had no speech. Her eyes were the colour of distant love, her twin arms were made of white topaz. Her lips moved, silent, in a coral light, and suddenly she went out by that door. Entering the river she was cleaned, shining like a white stone in the rain, and without looking back she swam again swam towards emptiness, swam towards death.

Only with kisses and red poppies can I love you, with rain-soaked wreaths, contemplating ashen horses and yellow dogs. Only with waves at my back can I love you, between dull explosions of brimstone and reflective waters, swimming against cemeteries that circulate in certain rivers, drowned pasture flooding the sad, chalky tombstones, swimming across submerged hearts and faded lists of unburied children.

The Potter Your whole body is A glass of wine Or sweetness destined for me. When I raise my hand, I find in every place a dove Seeking for me, As if, my love, You were made of clay For my very hands of a potter. Your knees, your breasts, Your waist, Disappear in me like in a hollow Of a thirsting earth Where they lose A form, And together We become like a single river, Like a single grain of sand.

XXVII" Naked, you are simple as a hand, smooth, earthy, small...transparent, round. You have moon lines and apple paths; Naked, you are slender as the wheat. Naked, Cuban blue midnight is your color, Naked, I trace the stars and vines in your hair; Naked, you are spacious and yellow As a summer's wholeness in a golden church. Naked, you are tiny as your fingernail; Subtle and curved in the rose-colored dawn And you withdraw to the underground world As if down a long tunnel of clothing and of chores: your clear light dims, gets dressed, drops its leaves, And becomes a naked hand again.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body, the sovereign nose of your arrogant face, I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes, and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight, hunting for you, for your hot heart, like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.

My love, suddenly your hip is the curve of the wineglass filled to the brim, your breast is the cluster, your hair the light of alcohol, your nipples, the grapes your navel pure seal stamped on your barrel of a belly, and your love the cascade of unquenchable wine, the brightness that falls on my senses, the earthen splendor of life.

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 sonorously on its languid shadows, its green poppies.

Ours is a lank country and on the naked edge of her knife our frail flag burns.

Book beautiful book, miniscule forest, leaf after leaf your paper smells of the elements. . . .

..her eyes were the color of faraway love her arms were matching topazes her lips moved soundlessly in the coral light and ultimately, she left by the door..

Little by little, and also in great leaps, life happened to me, and how insignificant this business is. These veins carried my blood, which I scarcely ever saw, I breathed the air of so many places without keeping a sample of any. In the end, everyone is aware of this: nobody keeps any of what he has, and life is only a borrowing of bones.

I am hungry for your silken laughter, For your hands the color of savage harvest, Hungry for the pail stones of your fingernails. I want to eat your skin like a whole almond. from “Love Sonnet XI

Every Day You Play" Every day you play with the light of the universe. Subtle visitor, you arrive in the flower and the water. You are more than this white head that I hold tightly as a cluster of fruit, every day, between my hands. You are like nobody since I love you. Let me spread you out among yellow garlands. Who writes your name in letters of smoke among the stars of the south? Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed. Suddenly the wind howls and bangs at my shut window. The sky is a net crammed with shadowy fish. Here all the winds let go sooner or later, all of them. The rain takes off her clothes. The birds go by, fleeing. The wind. The wind. I can contend only against the power of men. The storm whirls dark leaves and turns loose all the boats that were moored last night to the sky. You are here. Oh, you do not run away. You will answer me to the last cry. Cling to me as though you were frightened. Even so, at one time a strange shadow ran through your eyes. Now, now too, little one, you bring me honeysuckle, and even your breasts smell of it. While the sad wind goes slaughtering butterflies I love you, and my happiness bites the plum of your mouth. How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me, my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running. So many times we have seen the morning star burn, kissing our eyes, and over our heads the gray light unwind in turning fans. My words rained over you, stroking you. A long time I have loved the sunned mother-of-pearl of your body. I go so far as to think that you own the universe. I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains, bluebells, dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses. I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.

And that's how it was, that night, shadow and space, earth and time, something that runs and falls and passes. And that's how all the nights go over the earth, leaving only a vague black odor. A leaf falls, a drop on the earth muffles its sound, the forest sleeps, the waters, the meadows, the bells, the eyes. I hear you and you breathe, my love, we sleep.

Oh, let what I am keep on existing and ceasing to exist, and let my obedience align itself with such iron       conditions that the quaking of deaths and of births doesn't shake the deep place I want to reserve for myself eternally.

in the end, everyone is aware of this: nobody keeps any of what he has, and life is only a borrowing of bones.