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The Poetry of Pablo Neruda

4.44 of 5 stars 4.44 · rating details · 8,336 ratings · 158 reviews

The most comprehensive English-language collection of work ever by "the greatest poet of the twentieth century - in any language" - Gabriel García Márquez

"In his work a continent awakens to consciousness." So wrote the Swedish Academy in awarding the Nobel Prize to Pablo Neruda, the author of more than thirty-five books of poetry and one of Latin America's most revered wri...more

Paperback, Reprint Edition, 1040 pages

Published April 2005 by Farrar Straus Giroux (first published 1974)

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Apr 22, 2013 Steve aka Sckenda rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: poetry, chilean-authors, love, man, 20th-century, communism, favorites, nobel-prize-writer, nobel-prize, south-america, social-justice, on-going, nature

“I love things with a wild passion, extravagantly.”
--Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda declared love with an inebriated tongue of flaming gold. The poet came from the people, and for them he sang. The poet molded ingots of song from mud, ash, and leaf-- into which he then sprinkled crushed emerald and lapis lazuli for ornament and for color. The mortar he mixed with sweat, blood, and uric acid.

Pablo Neruda (1904-1973)-- the Chilean poet, exile, politician, and winner of the 1971 Nobel Prize-- loved wi...more “I love things with a wild passion, extravagantly.”
--Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda declared love with an inebriated tongue of flaming gold. The poet came from the people, and for them he sang. The poet molded ingots of song from mud, ash, and leaf-- into which he then sprinkled crushed emerald and lapis lazuli for ornament and for color. The mortar he mixed with sweat, blood, and uric acid.

Pablo Neruda (1904-1973)-- the Chilean poet, exile, politician, and winner of the 1971 Nobel Prize-- loved with a reckless abandon, and it spilled over into words—hundreds of thousands of glittering and loamy words. Four themes dominate his thousands of poems: love; nature; politics; and Neruda himself. But love is the leitmotif that links all themes as one.

1) Love
Most people will be attracted to Neruda’s love poems and songs of despair. Neruda was a lover of women, three of whom especially inflame his poetry. Much of the love poetry is tangled, moist, rich and earthy. This sonnet is one of my favorites:

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 be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

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 fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Some of his love poems are explicitly sexual, and you will find many metaphors related to the secret organs of the earth: raucous roots piercing pungent soil; ships (vaginas), and swords, and sea foam.

Body of woman, white hills, white thighs,
You look like the world in your posture of surrender.
My savage peasant body digs through you
And makes the son leap from the depth of the earth.

But Neruda’s love poetry is tinged with sadness and despair:

To feel you in my veins like God in the rivers and adore you in the sorrowful bones of dust and lime.

Your breasts smell of honeysuckle while the sad wind goes slaughtering butterflies.

2) Nature
Let Neruda be your effusive tour guide into the heart of South American mountains, pampas, jungles, and tundra. He wrote odes celebrating all of his continent's biodiversity and terrain and some were very long, Whitmanesque catalogs of flora and fauna. The biophilist in me responded to his many individual odes celebrating the earth and its land features and forms; its rocks and minerals; flora and fauna. Neruda transports you to the bird nests in the rainforest or along the Chilean coast. Listen to the shrieks of birds and dodge droppings as you read scores of odes devoted to different species: albatross; toucan; kestrel; seagull; cormorant; parakeet; gull; woodpecker; lapwing; mockingbird, and dodo bird. Likewise, Neruda loved rocks. He starts with an ode to the atom and proceeds to describe, in separate poems, the dozens of rocks and minerals unique to South America.

There is something dense, united, seated in the depths,
Repeating its number, its identical sign.
How clear it is that the stones have touched time,
In their fine substance there is a smell of age
And the water that the sea brings from salt and sleep.”(32)

3) Politics
Neruda was a fearless political poet who endured years of exile because he would not shut up. Some readers expressly dislike his political poems, but he casts his lot with the oppressed and for him, silence was complicity with the oppressors. I encourage conservative readers to be patient and try to understand why Neruda was outraged at imperialism and colonialism-- at “the blood thirsty flies” who plundered Latin America's natural resources, exterminated indigenous culture, and supported kleptocratic capitalist dictators.

Admittedly, I cringe when I see his handful of naive odes celebrating Stalin, Mao, and Castro—each of whom he later renounced when he learned of their butchery. But on the whole, I think his political poems are another form of the love poetry-but, instead of erotic love for a woman, he proclaims love for the people and for social justice:

Let it be known that nobody crossed my path without sharing my being.
I plunged up to the neck in adversities that were not mine,
Into all the sufferings of others. (680)

Ah great love, small beloved!
I did not stop in the struggle.
I did not stop marching toward life,
Toward peace, toward bread for all.

For my life, give me
All lives,
Give me all the sorrow
Of all the world
And I will transform it
Into hope. (364)

He was a prophets of justice like Neruda-- artists who venture outside self-absorption to take on the burdens of others and who risk disdain by proclaiming affiliations that will immediately alienate many readers. THey are political love poems to the people whom he saw as oppressed.

4) Personal
Neruda’s father was a provincial rail worker, and his mother died a few months after his birth. I see him as the Hispanic Walt Whitman. “I begin by evoking Whitman,” Neruda declares :

Because I love my country
I claim you, essential brother,
old Walt Whitman with your old gray hands. (825)

I touched a hand that day,
and it was Walt Whitman’s hand.
Throughout my entire childhood,
my companion was that hand with dew on it.
And Walt did not disdain
All the gifts of the earth
but raised my eyes
to the treasure we find
Inside a kernel of wheat. (425)

Neruda’s poems, like Whitman’s, are often catalogs of the various places he lived, the people he met, the flora and fauna that intrigued him, and the martyrs and poets who made him weep.

This Collection
Presented here are 600 poems, approximately a quarter of what Neruda wrote and which are ordered chronologically and organized by collection. The editor sprinkled in some untranslated Spanish poems; and occasionally gives alternate English translations of the same poem, which may surprise you at the tremendous difference a translator makes. Sometimes a poem that meant little to me in one translation leapt to life in another. I can honestly say, I loved nearly every single poem in this collection. I highlighted something on almost every page, and I place this book on my altar bookcase, so that I may continually re-read Neruda with Whitman, Shakespeare and Montaigne for the rest of my life.

My Conclusion
This is my first review of poetry. A poet communicates experience in condensed and concentrated language. Neruda sings of multiplicity and of common things. In the words of the editor, Neruda “works from the bottom up.”

I kneel with Neruda in the search for epiphany. I stand with him in rebellion against abstract, abstruse, evasive poetry. Irony and experimentalism have their place in poetry, but I prefer my poets-- passionate, simple, understandable, and honest. In Neruda’s heart there were furies and sorrows that he unleashes. He speaks for us that we might better speak for ourselves.

I wrote this review on March 3, 2013. (less)

45 likes · like · see review

Feb 19, 2013 Bennet rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: the-arts-poetry-film-music

Posted while reading: It's Valentine's Day and I want to share a love poem.

Here I love you.
In the dark pines the wind disentangles itself.
The moon glows like phosphorus on the vagrant waters.
Days, all one kind, go chasing each other.

The snow unfurls in dancing figures.
A silver gull slips down from the west.
Sometimes a sail. High, high stars.

Oh the black cross of a ship.
Alone.
Sometimes I get up early and my soul is wet.
Far away the sea sounds and resounds.
This is a port.
Here I love you.

Here I lov

...more

20 likes · like · see review

Jan 19, 2012 Kelly rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: classics, kindle, love, moving, poetry, favorites, inspiration

"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 who between my chest and your fragrance
want to interpose their obscure plant.

About me, nothing worse
they will tell you, my love,
than what I told you.

I lived in the prairies
before I got to know you
and I did not wait love but I was
laying in wait for and I jumped on the rose.

What more can they tell you?
I am neither good nor bad but a man,
and they wil...more

9 likes · like · see review

Nov 26, 2010 Venus added it

Shelves: poem

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 drowning at the heart
or collapsing inwards from skin to soul.

There are corpses,
clammy slabs for feet,
there is death in the bones,
like a pure sound,
a bark without its dog,
out of certain bells, certain tombs
swelling in this humidity like lament or rain.

I see, when alone at times,
coffins under sail
setting out with the pale dead, women in their dead b...more

8 likes · like · see review

Apr 01, 2011 Becca rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: grown-up-stuff, non-fiction, poetry

After reading "The Dreamer" by Pam Munoz Ryan, I headed to the local library to see what they had of Neruda's writings. I wanted to read his "Book of Questions." This volume was what I came away with, and yes, it contains some of said questions.

How does one rate a book of poetry, especially one so crammed full? One needs to be able to rate each poem! I definitely have my favorites, as well as ones I didn't particularly care for. Overall I enjoyed his "Elemental Odes" the best, and parts of "Is...more

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Aug 04, 2007 Izzy G rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: THE WHOLE ENTIRE PLANET

Shelves: mustreads

This book is the quintessential poetry book. Neruda is untouchable and this compilation is the best. If my house was burning and I could only run out with one book it would be a close call between this and Lorca's compilation. You could be stranded on a desert island with this book for the rest of your life and you would have a smile on your face. Y ahora, pido silencio.

3 likes · like · see review

Dec 05, 2010 BurningYourBooks rated it 4 of 5 stars

Neruda knew how to love a woman. There's such a sensuous, tactile quality to his poetry that makes you think he just might have been one hell of a lover. And mixed in with this earthy prose is an appreciation for the subtle, fleeting moments that last only in quick impressions and memories of wanting and desire. In one moment he tells us of the heavy weight and feel as he cups the rounded breasts of his mistress and the next he sighs his longing for the ability to devour the parts of her that li...more

6 likes · like · see review

Jun 16, 2012 Taya M rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: school-related

i had to read this for english and when I found out that we would be doing poetry i though great more snide comments from boys that don't want to learn about sappy poetry, however, even though there were some people that did groan and moan about the compleate unfairness of the fact that they had to read poetry I discovered that Pablo Neruda was a genious. I think that Neruda should be labeled one of the influential writers of all time becuase his work is referenced constantly in writing and what...more

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Sep 06, 2009 Snehal Bhagat rated it 4 of 5 stars

An anthology of Pablo Neruda's poems translated into English.

With over 600 poems, this is a large and fairly representative collection covering sonnets, odes, cantos and free verse drawn from across the poet's entire career. I have been reading it on and off for a fairly long time but I still have not finished reading all of it, having skimmed through some parts and skipped others altogether primarily for two reasons: the difficulty, sometimes, in establishing the context, and the problems asso...more An anthology of Pablo Neruda's poems translated into English.

With over 600 poems, this is a large and fairly representative collection covering sonnets, odes, cantos and free verse drawn from across the poet's entire career. I have been reading it on and off for a fairly long time but I still have not finished reading all of it, having skimmed through some parts and skipped others altogether primarily for two reasons: the difficulty, sometimes, in establishing the context, and the problems associated with the language barrier.

There's always this thing about poetry and the milieu in which it is written- some poems draw only on shared human experience and so need little by way of a background- as with a great deal of love poetry, while for others, the entire meaning can hinge on the reader's awareness or ignorance of its context; the former therefore tends to be more durable and has broader appeal. Neruda's love poetry is no exception - it is exquisite and extremely accessible; but I struggled with his epic poetry for I do not know enough of the context or the details of the provenance for quite a bit of it.

The problem is persistent; even for a poem that purely describes nature, when we read '..and it is here that the world ends.' we can infer from the context that it is a place that is being spoken of and not a moment in time; but we do not know what place that is. Pedantic as it may seem, it matters whether the place the poet had in mind was off Cape Horn or the middle of the Atacama desert, especially because the verse is rooted so deeply in the land, its people and their traditions- often, both history and geography are intertwined to inform the narrative, so this isn't poetry that describes a continent as much as defines it:

The poisonous skin of the copper, the nitrate salt spread out
like a statue, crumbled and snowy: they're mine, but not
only them: also the vineyards, the cherries the spring rewards,

they are mine too, and I belong to them, like a black atom
in the arid land, in the autumn light on the grapes,
in this metallic homeland lifted by towers of snow.

Bards of course, are the bearers of literary ambrosia, but it is not merely when they concern themselves with the heroic canon that poets have the power to grant immortality; they can take everyday experiences and imbue them with deep significance, distill the wistful and extract the poignant, transform the merely special to the truly magical and in so doing make our ordinary lives a little less so.

It is said of Neruda that he caresses words, and that there is great beauty in his use of the language; and doubtless this must be true, but though the original poem in Spanish often appears along with the English translation here, for those of us who do not understand both languages, there is no way to really appreciate it. And not knowing just how much the spirit of the original is captured in the translation can be frustrating too; but this is not to take away from the quality of the translations - even in the English versions there is no denying the moments when the breath comes unstitched and the heart misses a beat.

The oeuvre of the poet who was the 'voice of the voiceless' is immensely prolific, yet incredibly versatile and so defies easy analysis. It goes through the entire spectrum- passionate, sad, tender, political, ornate, erotic, whimsical - witness the 'Ode to the Artichoke'- and at times dull and prosaic, but it is always original, and there are gems to be found even in his lesser known works. There is something charming about his politically motivated poetry too; quaint the anti-capitalistic tirades, Nixon-bashing and the Marxist espousal may seem now, but there is no mistaking the emotional intensity, the earnestness of feeling, the conviction of belief and the love of the utopian ideal that underlies it.

This is a good book to pick up on a lazy afternoon and dip into at random, and I intend to revisit it again -and often, in the future; yo volveré - as the poet says.(less)

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Mar 28, 2013 Ria Alexandra rated it 3 of 5 stars

While a beautiful anthology, I was very disappointed to find that it is not a complete bilingual edition. There is a sampling of *some* of the original poems in Spanish, but if you are looking for a side-by-side reading this is not it. In all fairness, Ilan Stavans presents a formidable compilation of Neruda's poems, and several translations of one poem are included for comparison (demonstrating the art of translation), but if you are looking for Neruda's poems in the original Spanish look elsew...more

1 like · like · see review

Feb 28, 2008 Chris M. rated it 5 of 5 stars

I'm not big on poetry. I've read the classics - Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Donne, etc. I've read the epic poems - Iliad, Odyssey, Gilgamesh. But modern era poetry usually leaves me cold--too much angst and unrequited love. However, I am always left floored by Neruda. Ode to Common Things got me into Neruda and remains one of my all time favorites. He is mostly famous for his love poems; and, while they are extraordinary, they are not IMHO his best. Neruda sees the epic and timeless connectio...more

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Aug 10, 2011 Stuart Cooke added it

The bigger the volume, the worse Neruda looks. You only get a sense of his genius if you include generous selections of his earlier work (Veinte Poemas until Tercera residencia), a fair chunk of Canto general, a few Odas, then a very, very slim selection of the fluff he wrote from then onwards. This collection, however, is weighted far too heavily towards the latter part of his career, which tarnishes the incredible leaps and bounds he made in the remarkable years of his youth.

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Jul 10, 2009 Karianne rated it 5 of 5 stars

LOVE HIM...an excerpt from my favorite poem...

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her voice. Her bright body. Her inifinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

8 likes · like · see review

Jan 07, 2011 jessaka rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: poetry

I have written poetry off and on all my life but so few poems have I kept. I am not a lover of poetry, nor do I really understand most of it. I came up on this book at a bookstore and found that I couldn't put it down. I would begin to walk out of the store, just to find myself back with this book, over and over again, so I had to own it. It inspires me when I need inspiration to write, but I don't consider myself a poet. It is obvious why he is so well loved as a poet.

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Dec 29, 2011 Katie Joiner rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

Three words: Neruda. Is. Amazing.
He is the best poet-or was, I guess-that this world has seen to date. He's become my new favorite! My family makes fun of me beacause I have something akin to a crush on him, but, hey, a girl can dream!
His poetry is beautiful, captivating. I read a few every night before I go to bed, and it was perfect. I got sucked in.
Okay, so you know how when you write something, or you read something, and there's this line that makes you go, "whoa" ? Usually it's the first...more

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Aug 26, 2010 Yasmin rated it 5 of 5 stars

I have loved Pablo Neruda since I was fifteen years old and have fell in love with his beautiful expressions countless times. I believe his raw passion speaks to all of us on a universal level. It's so human and bare, it is his monument left to us. This is an amazing collection which begins with his early work to his retrospective years, it shows you this amazing evolution of his writing and how powerful it becomes.

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Oct 06, 2011 Elizabeth rated it 5 of 5 stars

I am not certain whether this is the correct version, will need to check at home. The proper edition will have both the original, spanish-language poems, and a good translation to english language. Enough is lost in translation that even a reader with intermediate spanish-language skills will be able to capture much more from beginning with the spanish language version.

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Mar 20, 2012 Marik Casmon rated it 2 of 5 stars

This is the worst collection of Pablo Neruda's poetry that I have ever read. It is interminable, repetitive, and, often, translated poorly. There are many collections of Neruda that I would choose first. I gave it two stars ONLY because there are over 900 pages and the editor, Ilan Stavans, was bound to get it right now and then.

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Mar 30, 2013 S.J. Pettersson rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: worn-spines

"The sad wind goes on slaughtering butterflies..." The word "butterfly" is such a beautiful word in almost all the languages I know. In Spanish "mariposa", French "papillon", Danish "sommerfugl" and Swedish "fjäril". Only in Germany could they call it Schmetterling and then on top of it give the name to a fighter plane...

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Jan 21, 2011 Née rated it 5 of 5 stars

Neruda is easily one of my favourite poets and this is a great compilation of his work. I only wonder if the meaning would be slightly different for some of these poems if I could read them in their original language (Spanish), but his writing is so beautiful that it's worth reading anyway.

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Sep 17, 2012 Kristine Novero rated it 5 of 5 stars

Good poetry is a culmination of eloquence, sensibility and vision. Pablo Neruda exemplifies these, and more. His words ignite a sea of imagination, bringing forth a daydreaming frenzy while still enabling me to bask in reality. He wouldn't have a Nobel Prize in Literature back in 1971 for nothing.

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Aug 03, 2007 Leila rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: everyone

Shelves: poetry

breathtaking, heart wrenching, soul awakening -- Neruda is love ...
"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 be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

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 fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where....more

3 likes · like · see review

Apr 28, 2012 Nand rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

The most beautiful poetry! This man writes about love and adoration like no other. And what's especially humbling for me is everything I've read by him has been translated to English. I stirs my curiosity as to what might be missing ... lost in translation.

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Jul 18, 2012 Steve rated it 5 of 5 stars

ok, you think you're awesome. I get it. So did I.

look at the man on the cover of this book, then look at yourself.
yeah, feels good.

Now: examine your love life, and examine his.
Weep in self pity OR read these words of unabashed love and start living.

1 like · like · see review

Nov 01, 2011 ✌ Kaye ♡ marked it as to-read

Shelves: non-fiction, art-artist

After Anna and the French Kiss mentioned it, I thought I had to see what beautiful poems they were referring to.

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May 11, 2011 Lena marked it as to-read

A friend of mine composes songs on piano with Pablo Neruda's poems as lyrics and listening to his songs I became intrigued with Pablo Neruda. I'm yet to read more of his work but the little I have read (and heard) has been promising.

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Mar 05, 2012 Mzmonica rated it 5 of 5 stars

Suspiro suspiro...mi alma se siente muy feliz en saber que un hombre puede poner en palabra sus sentimientos......
I sigh at reading his words.my soul feels so happy in knowing that a man can put such feelings in to words ...

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Jan 22, 2011 lilly bear ♡ rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites, the-haves

I could read him for hours and never tire of it. I cannot get enough of his earthy, robust symbolism. The worn-out, battered copy perched on my bed-side table can attest to how often I read and swoon over this particular edition.

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Mar 09, 2009 Amber rated it 5 of 5 stars

I was introduced to Pablo Neruda in 2002 and instantly fell in love with his unbelievable poetry. This is the definitive book of Neruda's works. I keep it beside my desk and thumb through it regularly. Gorgeous.

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Mar 08, 2013 Dragana rated it 5 of 5 stars

I was not a fan of poetry... For a long time... Especially "pathetic love poems" made me dislike all poetry. Then a friend recommended Neruda and I was captured.
There is nothing "pathetic" about Neruda and his love, it's simple yet different, deep and thoughtful, I love the words he uses, the scenes he portraits, his beloved as sand, sea, fruit, the way he praises her body, hear, lips... As if she was fragile, so fragile and delicate that one wrong word could scatter her into million pieces, acr...more

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About Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean writer and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. Neruda assumed his pen name as a teenager, partly because it was in vogue, partly to hide his poetry from his father, a rigid man who wanted his son to have a "practical" occupation. Neruda's pen name was derived from Czech writer and poet Jan Neruda; Pablo is thought to be fro...more Pablo Neruda was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean writer and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. Neruda assumed his pen name as a teenager, partly because it was in vogue, partly to hide his poetry from his father, a rigid man who wanted his son to have a "practical" occupation. Neruda's pen name was derived from Czech writer and poet Jan Neruda; Pablo is thought to be from Paul Verlaine. With his works translated into many languages, Pablo Neruda is considered one of the greatest and most influential poets of the 20th century.

Neruda was accomplished in a variety of styles ranging from erotically charged love poems like his collection Twenty Poems of Love and a Song of Despair, surrealist poems, historical epics, and overtly political manifestos. In 1971 Neruda won the Nobel Prize for Literature, a controversial award because of his political activism. Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez once called him "the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language."

On July 15, 1945, at Pacaembu Stadium in São Paulo, Brazil, he read to 100,000 people in honor of Communist revolutionary leader Luís Carlos Prestes. When Neruda returned to Chile after his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Salvador Allende invited him to read at the Estadio Nacional before 70,000 people.

During his lifetime, Neruda occupied many diplomatic posts and served a stint as a senator for the Chilean Communist Party. When Conservative Chilean President González Videla outlawed communism in Chile, a warrant was issued for Neruda's arrest. Friends hid him for months in a house basement in the Chilean port of Valparaíso. Later, Neruda escaped into exile through a mountain pass near Maihue Lake into Argentina. Years later, Neruda was a close collaborator to socialist President Salvador Allende.

Neruda was hospitalized with cancer at the time of the Chilean coup d'état led by Augusto Pinochet. Three days after being hospitalized, Neruda died of heart failure. Already a legend in life, Neruda's death reverberated around the world. Pinochet had denied permission to transform Neruda's funeral into a public event. However, thousands of grieving Chileans disobeyed the curfew and crowded the streets. Neruda's funeral became the first public protest against the Chilean military dictatorship.(less)

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“The Truth is in the prolouge.
Death to the romantic fool.,
the expert in solitary confinement.” — 12 people liked it

“I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.” — 9 people liked it

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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5936.The_Poetry_of_Pablo_Neruda?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1349043827l/5936.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5936.The_Poetry_of_Pablo_Neruda?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]The Poetry of Pablo Neruda by Pablo Neruda[/url]

The Poetry of Pablo Neruda

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