I like for you to be still It is as though you are absent And you hear me from far away And my voice does not touch you It seems…
You are going to ask: and where are the lilacs? and the poppy-petalled metaphysics? and the rain repeatedly spattering its words and drilling them full of apertures and birds? I’ll…
DON’T GO FAR OFF, NOT EVEN FOR A DAY Don’t go far off, not even for a day, because — because — I don’t know how to say it: a…
Pablo Neruda Here I love you. In the dark pines the wind disentangles itself. The moon glows like phosphorous on the vagrant waters. Days, all one kind, go chasing each…
The young maricones and the horny muchachas, The big fat widows delirious from insomnia, The young wives thirty hours’ pregnant, And the hoarse tomcats that cross my garden at night,…
The names of God and especially those of His representative Who is called Jesus or Christ according to holy books and someone’s mouth These names have been used, worn out…
Rise up to be born with me, brother. Give me your hand from the deep Zone seeded by your sorrow. You won’t return from under the rocks. You won’t return…
Fleas interest me so much that I let them bite me for hours. They are perfect, ancient, Sanskrit, machines that admit of no appeal. They do not bite to eat,…
Matilde, years or days sleeping, feverish, here or there, gazing off, twisting my spine, bleeding true blood, perhaps I awaken or am lost, sleeping: hospital beds, foreign windows, white uniforms…
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…
Beloved of the rivers,beset By azure water and transparent drops, Like a tree of veins your spectre Of dark goddess biting apples: And then awakening naked To be tattoed by…
You’ve asked me what the lobster is weaving there with his golden feet? I reply, the ocean knows this. You say, what is the ascidia waiting for in its transparent…
Victory. It has come late, I had not learnt how to arrive, like the lily, at will, the white figure, that pierces the motionless eternity of earth, pushing at clear,…
Drunk as drunk on turpentine From your open kisses, Your wet body wedged Between my wet body and the strake Of our boat that is made of flowers, Feasted, we…
Don’t go far off, not even for a day, because — because — I don’t know how to say it: a day is long and I will be waiting for…
There are lone cemeteries, tombs full of soundless bones, the heart threading a tunnel, a dark, dark tunnel : like a wreck we die to the very core, as if…
Come with me, I said, and no one knew where, or how my pain throbbed, no carnations or barcaroles for me, only a wound that love had opened. I said…
We have lost even this twilight. No one saw us this evening hand in hand while the blue night dropped on the world. I have seen from my window the…
How neatly a cat sleeps, Sleeps with its paws and its posture, Sleeps with its wicked claws, And with its unfeeling blood, Sleeps with ALL the rings a series Of…
Castro Alves from Brazil, for whom did you sing? Did you sing for the flower? For the water whose beauty whispered words to the stones? Did you sing to the…
Carnal apple, Woman filled, burning moon, dark smell of seaweed, crush of mud and light, what secret knowledge is clasped between your pillars? What primal night does Man touch with…
Brown and agile child, the sun which forms the fruit And ripens the grain and twists the seaweed Has made your happy body and your luminous eyes And given your…
It was passed from one bird to another, the whole gift of the day. The day went from flute to flute, went dressed in vegetation, in flights which opened a…
And because love battles not only in its burning agricultures but also in the mouth of men and women, I will finish off by taking the path away to those…
I am not jealous of what came before me. Come with a man on your shoulders, come with a hundred men in your hair, come with a thousand men between…
Era el crepúsculo de la iguana. Desde la arcoirisada crestería su leengua como un dardo se hundía en la verdura, el hormiguero monacal pisaba con melodioso pie la selva, el…
I have scarcely left you When you go in me, crystalline, Or trembling, Or uneasy, wounded by me Or overwhelmed with love, as when your eyes Close upon the gift…
The memory of you emerges from the night around me. The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea. Deserted like the dwarves at dawn. It is the hour of…
Out of lemon flowers loosed on the moonlight, love’s lashed and insatiable essences, sodden with fragrance, the lemon tree’s yellow emerges, the lemons move down from the tree’s planetarium Delicate…
My dog has died. I buried him in the garden next to a rusted old machine. Some day I’ll join him right there, but now he’s gone with his shaggy…