I want you to know one thing. You know how this is: if I look at the crystal moon, at the red branch of the slow autumn at my window,…
Posts published in “Poems”
Take bread away from me, if you wish, take air away, but do not take from me your laughter. Do not take away the rose, the lance flower that you…
When your hands leap towards mine, love, what do they bring me in flight? Why did they stop at my lips, so suddenly, why do I know them, as if…
When I cannot look at your face I look at your feet. Your feet of arched bone, your hard little feet. I know that they support you, and that your…
You are the daughter of the sea, oregano’s first cousin. Swimmer, your body is pure as the water; cook, your blood is quick as the soil. Everything you do is…
Thinking, tangling shadows in the deep solitude. You are far away too, oh farther than anyone. Thinking, freeing birds, dissolving images, burying lamps. Belfry of fogs, how far away, up…
I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz, or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off. I love you as certain dark things are to…
Spain was a taut, dry drum-head Daily beating a dull thud Flatlands and eagle’s nest Silence lashed by the storm. How much, to the point of weeping, in my soul…
Of the many men whom I am, whom we are, I cannot settle on a single one. They are lost to me under the cover of clothing They have departed…
Everything on the earth bristled, the bramble pricked and the green thread nibbled away, the petal fell, falling until the only flower was the falling itself. Water is another matter,…
I touch hatred like a covered breast; I without stopping go from garment to garment, sleeping at a distance. I am not, I’m of no use, I do not know…
Three triangles of birds crossed Over the enormous ocean which extended In winter like a green beast. Everything just lay there, the silence, The unfolding gray, the heavy light Of…
O tower of light, sad beauty that magnified necklaces and statues in the sea, calcareous eye, insignia of the vast waters, cry of the mourning petrel, tooth of the sea,…
Tonight I can write the saddest lines. Write, for example, ‘The night is starry and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.’ The night wind revolves in the…
Tie your heart at night to mine, love, and both will defeat the darkness like twin drums beating in the forest against the heavy wall of wet leaves. Night crossing:…
Ocean, if you were to give, a measure, a ferment, a fruit of your gifts and destructions, into my hand, I would choose your far-off repose, your contour of steel,…
Lost in the forest, I broke off a dark twig and lifted its whisper to my thirsty lips: maybe it was the voice of the rain crying, a cracked bell,…
The weary one, orphan of the masses, the self, the crushed one, the one made of concrete, the one without a country in crowded restaurants, he who wanted to go…
When the trumpet sounded, it was all prepared on the earth, the Jehovah parcelled out the earth to Coca Cola, Inc., Anaconda, Ford Motors, and other entities: The Fruit Company,…
The tree is here, still, in pure stone, in deep evidence, in solid beauty, layered, through a hundred million years. Agate, cornelian, gemstone transmuted the timber and sap until damp…
Love, a question has destroyed you. I have come back to you from thorny uncertainty. I want you straight as the sword or the road. But you insist on keeping…
I have named you queen. There are taller than you, taller. There are purer than you, purer. There are lovelier than you, lovelier. But you are the queen. When you…
Oh yes I knew him, I spent years with him, with his golden and stony substance, he was a man who was tired – in Paraguay he left his father…
I recall that man and not two centuries have passed since I saw him, he went neither by horse nor by carriage: purely on foot he outstripped distances, and carried…
To the solemn sea the old women come With their shawls knotted around their necks With their fragile feet cracking. They sit down alone on the shore Without moving their…
Ancient night and the unruly salt beat at the walls of my house. The shadow is all one, the sky throbs now along with the ocean, and sky and shadow…
I’m Ramón González Barbagelata from anywhere, from Cucuy, from Paraná, from Rio Turbio, from Oruro, from Maracaibo, from Parral, from Ovalle, from Loconmilla, I’m the poor devil from the poor…
The light wraps you in its mortal flame. Abstracted pale mourner, standing that way against the old propellers of the twighlight that revolves around you. Speechless, my friend, alone in…
From your hips down to your feet I want to make a long journey. I am smaller than an insect. Over these hills I pass, hills the colour of oats,…
Writing these odes in this year nineteen hundred and fifty-five, readying and tuning my demanding, murmuring lyre, I know who I am and where my song is going. I understand…
My eyes went away from me Following a dark girl who went by. She was made of black motherofpearl Made of darkpurple grapes, And she lashed my blood With her…
They all ask me to jump to invigorate and to play soccer, to run, to swim and to fly. Very well. They all advise me rest, they all send me…
This day, Today, was a brimming glass. This day, Today, was an immense wave. This day was all the Earth. This day, the storm-driven ocean lifted us up in a…
An odor has remained among the sugarcane: a mixture of blood and body, a penetrating petal that brings nausea. Between the coconut palms the graves are full of ruined bones,…
If suddenly you do not exist, if suddenly you are not living, I shall go on living. I do not dare, I do not dare to write it, if you…
Tell me, is the rose naked Or is that her only dress?. Why do trees conceal The splendor of their roots?. Who hears the regrets Of the thieving automobile?. Is…
You are the daughter of the sea, oregano’s first cousin. Swimmer, your body is pure as the water; cook, your blood is quick as the soil. Everything you do is…
Naked, you are simple as one of your hands, Smooth, earthy, small, transparent, round: You have moonlines, applepathways: Naked, you are slender as a naked grain of wheat. Naked, you…
Pablo Neruda I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz, or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off. I love you as certain dark things…
I hunt for a sign of you in all the others, In the rapid undulant river of women, Braids, shyly sinking eyes, Light step that slices, sailing through the foam.…
The light that rises from your feet to your hair, the strength enfolding your delicate form, are not mother of pearl, not chilly silver: you are made of bread, a…
I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair. Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets. Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day I hunt for the…
Who ever desired each other as we do? Let us look for the ancient ashes of hearts that burned, and let our kisses touch there, one by one, till the…
If your eyes were not the color of the moon, of a day full [here, interrupted by the baby waking – continued about 26 hours later ] of a day…
Already, you are mine. Rest with your dream inside my dream. Love, grief, labour, must sleep now. Night revolves on invisible wheels and joined to me you are pure as…
Maybe you’ll remember that razor-faced man who slipped out from the dark like a blade and – before we realized – knew what was there: he saw the smoke and…
There where the waves shatter on the restless rocks the clear light bursts and enacts its rose, and the sea-circle shrinks to a cluster of buds, to one drop of…
Pablo Neruda o te amo como si fueras rosa de sal, topacio o flecha de claveles que propagan el fuego: te amo como se aman ciertas cosas oscuras, secretamente, entre…
Neither the heart cut by a piece of glass in a wasteland of thorns nor the atrocious waters seen in the corners of certain houses, waters like eyelids and eyes…
It was the twilight of the iguana: From a rainbowing battlement, a tongue like a javelin lunging in verdure; an ant heap treading the jungle, monastic, on musical feet; the…