Twenty Love Poems And A Song Of Despair

by Pablo Neruda

BODY OF A WOMAN Body of a woman, white hills, white thighs, You Look like a world lying in surrender . My rough peasant’s body digs in you and makes the son leap from the depths of the earth. I was alone like a tunnel. The birds fled from me, and night 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 flows and weariness follows, and the infinite ache.

THE LIGHT WRAPS YOU The light wraps you in its mortal flame. Abstracted pale mourner, standing that way against the old propellers of the twilight that revolves around you Speechless, my friend, alone in the loneliness of this hour of the dead and filled with the lives of fire, pure heir of the ruined day . A bough of fruit falls from the sun on your dark garment. The great roots of night grow suddenly from your soul, and things that hide in you come out again so that a blue and pallid people, your newly born, takes nourishment. Oh magnificent and fecund and magnetic slave of the circle that moves in turn through black and gold: rise, lead and possess a creation so rich in life that its flowers perish and it is full of sadness.

Ah vastness of pines, murmur of waves breaking, slow play of lights, solitary bell, twilight falling in your eyes, toy doll, earth-shell, in whom the earth sings! In you the rivers sing and my soul flees in them as you desire, and you send it where you will. Aim my road on your bow of hope and in a frenzy I will free my flock of arrows. On all sides I see you waist of fog, and your silence hunts my afflicted hours; my kisses anchor, and my moist desire nests in you with your arms of transparent stone. Ah your mysterious voice that love tolls and darkens in the resonant and dying evening! Thus in deep hours I have seen, over the fields, the ears of wheat tolling in the mouth of the wind.

The morning is full of storm in the heart of summer . The clouds travel like whit handkerchiefs of goodbye, the wind, travelling, waving them in its hands. The numberless heart of the wind beating above our loving silence. Orchestral and dinive, resounding among the trees like a language full of wars and songs. Wind that bears off the dead leaves with a quick raid and deflects the pulsing arrows of the birds. Wind that topples her in a wave without spray and substance without weight, and leaning fires. Her mass of kisses breaks and sinks, assailed in the door of the summer ’s wind.

So that you will hear me my words sometimes grow thin as the tracks of the gulls on the beaches. Necklace, drunken bell for your hands smooth as grapes. And I watch my words from a long way off. They are more yours than mine. They climb on my old suffering like ivy . It climbs the same way on damp walls. You are to blame for this cruel sport. They are fleeing from my dark lair . You fill everything, you fill everything. Before you they peopled the solitude that you occupy, and they are more used to my sadness than you are. Now I want them to say what I want to say to you to make you hear as I want you to hear me. The wind of anguish still hauls on them as usual. Sometimes hurricanes of dreams still knock them over. You listen to other voices in my painful voice. Lament of old mouths, blood of old supplications. Love me, companion. Don’t forsake me. Follow me. Follow me, companion, on this wave of anguish. But my words become stained with your love. You occupy everything, you occupy everything. I am making them into an endless necklace for you white hands, smooth as grapes.

I remember you as you were in the last autumn. You were the grey beret and the still heart. In your eyes the flames of twilight fought on. And the leaves fell in the water of your soul. Clasping my arms like a climbing plant the leaves garnered your voice, that was slow and at peace. Bonfire of awe in which my thirst was burning. Sweet blue hyacinth twisted over my soul. I feel your eyes travelling, and the autumn is far off: grey beret, voice of a bird, heart like a house toward which my deep longings migrated and my kisses fell, happy as embers. Sky from a ship. Field from the hills: Your memory is made of light, of smoke, of a still pond! Beyond your eyes, farther on, the evenings were blazing. Dry autumn leaves revolved in your soul.