And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul,

yo u stop in shock at the words you utter they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long. Did he speak? Did he flirt? Could you tell right away he was royalty? Is he sensitive, Clever, Well-mannered, Considerate, Passionate, Charming, As kind as he's handsome, As wise as he's rich, Is he everything you've ever wanted? Did I abuse her Or show her disdain? Why does she run from me? If I should lose her, How shall I regain The heart she has won from me? Agony! Beyond power of speech, When the one thing you want Is the only thing out of your reach. Be with me always - take any form - drive me mad! only do not leave me in this ab yss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I can not live without my life! I can not live without my soul! Through your eyes so bright and fine Calls soul to soul, mind to mind In the joining of our hands The end of sorrow Under the veil of your hair Along your curves, lithe and fair Into Eden unashamed I long to follow In In In Is the parting of your lips your every swell and dip the valley beautiful heaven borrowed

In the wonder of this night The agony of delight By a holy mystery We will be swallowed In the giving of my life In the loving of my wife In the union of our hearts All our tomorrows Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs, Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes, Being vexed, a sea nourished with lovers' tears. What is it else? A madness most discreet,

A choking gall and a preserving sweet. The Light Wraps You 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 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 the things that hide in you come out again so that a blue and palled 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. The Dead Woman 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 die. I shall go on living. Because where a man has no voice, there, my voice Where blacks are beaten, I can not be dead. When my brothers go to jail I shall go with them. When victory, not my victory, but the great victory arrives, even though I am mute I must speak: I shall see it come even though I am blind. No, forgive me, if you are not living, ifd you, beloved, my love, if you have died.

Sonnet XVII 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. Sonnet LXXXI And now you're mine. Rest with your dream in my dream. Love and pain and work should all sleep, now. The night turns on its invisible wheels, and you are pure beside me as a sleeping amber. No one else, Love, will sleep in my dreams. You will go, we will go together, over the waters of time. No one else will travel through the shadows with me, only you, evergreen, ever sun, ever moon. Your hands have already opened their delicate fists and let their soft drifting signs drop away; your eyes closed like two gray wings, and I move after, following the folding water you carry, that carries me away. The night, the world, the wind spin out their destiny. Without you, I am your dream, only that, and that is all. Sonnet LXXIII: Maybe you'll remember 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 concluded fire. The pallid woman with black hair rose like a fish from the abyss, and the two of them built up a contraption, armed to the teeth, against love. Man and woman, they felled mountains and gardens, then went down to the river, they scaled the walls, they hoisted their atrocious artillery up the hill. Then love knew it was called love. And when I lifted my eyes to your name, suddenly your heart showed me my way.

Song Of Despair The memory of you emerges from the night around me. The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea. Deserted like the wharves at dawn. It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one! Cold flower heads are raining over my heart. Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked. In you the wars and the flights accumulated. From you the wings of the song birds rose. You swallowed everything, like distance. Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank! It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss. The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse. Pilot's dread, fury of blind driver, turbulent drunkenness of love, in you everything sank! In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded. Lost discoverer, in you everything sank! You girdled sorrow, you clung to desire, sadness stunned you, in you everything sank! I made the wall of shadow draw back, beyond desire and act, I walked on. Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost, I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you. Like a jar you housed infinite tenderness. and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar. There was the black solitude of the islands, and there, woman of love, your arms took me in. There was thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit. There were grief and ruins, and you were the miracle. Ah woman, I do not know how you could contain me in the earth of your soul, in the cross of your arms! How terrible and brief my desire was to you! How difficult and drunken, how tensed and avid. Cemetery of kisses, there is still fire in your tombs, still the fruited boughs burn, pecked at by birds. Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs, oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bodies. Oh the mad coupling of hope and force in which we merged and despaired. And the tenderness, light as water and as flour.

And the word scarcely begun on the lips. This was my destiny and in it was my voyage of my longing, and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank! Oh pit of debris, everything fell into you, what sorrow did you not express, in what sorrow are you not drowned! From billow to billow you still called and sang. Standing like a sailor in the prow of a vessel. You still flowered in songs, you still brike the currents. Oh pit of debris, open and bitter well. Pale blind diver, luckless slinger, lost discoverer, in you everything sank! It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour which the night fastens to all the timetables. The rustling belt of the sea girdles the shore. Cold stars heave up, black birds migrate. Deserted like the wharves at dawn. Only tremulous shadow twists in my hands. Oh farther than everything. Oh farther than everything. It is the hour of departure. Oh abandoned one! Saddest Poem I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. Write, for instance: "The night is full of stars, and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance." The night wind whirls in the sky and sings. I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. On nights like this, I held her in my arms. I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky. She loved me, sometimes I loved her. How could I not have loved her large, still eyes? I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. To think I don't have her. To feel that I've lost her. To hear the immense night, more immense without her. And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass. What does it matter that my love couldn't keep her. The night is full of stars and she is not with me. That's all. Far away, someone sings. Far away. My soul is lost without her.

As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her. My heart searches for her and she is not with me. The same night that whitens the same trees. We, we who were, we are the same no longer. I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her. My voice searched the wind to touch her ear. Someone else's. She will be someone else's. As she once belonged to my kisses. Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes. I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her. Love is so short and oblivion so long. Because on nights like this I held her in my arms, my soul is lost without her. Although this may be the last pain she causes me, and this may be the last poem I write for her. Love What's wrong with you, with us, what's happening to us? Ah our love is a harsh cord that binds us wounding us and if we want to leave our wound, to separate, it makes a new knot for us and condemns us to drain our blood and burn together. What's wrong with you? I look at you and I find nothing in you but two eyes like all eyes, a mouth lost among a thousand mouths that I have kissed, more beautiful, a body just like those that have slipped beneath my body without leaving any memory. And how empty you went through the world like a wheat-colored jar without air, without sound, without substance! I vainly sought in you depth for my arms that dig, without cease, beneath the earth: beneath your skin, beneath your eyes, nothing, beneath your double breast scarcely raised a current of crystalline order that does not know why it flows singing. Why, why, why, my love, why? If You Forget Me 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, if I touch near the fire the impalpable ash or the wrinkled body of the log, everything carries me to you, as if everything that exists, aromas, light, metals, were little boats that sail toward those isles of yours that wait for me. Well, now, if little by little you stop loving me I shall stop loving you little by little. If suddenly you forget me do not look for me, for I shall already have forgotten you. If you think it long and mad, the wind of banners that passes through my life, and you decide to leave me at the shore of the heart where I have roots, remember that on that day, at that hour, I shall lift my arms and my roots will set off to seek another land. But if each day, each hour, you feel that you are destined for me with implacable sweetness, if each day a flower climbs up to your lips to seek me, ah my love, ah my own, in me all that fire is repeated, in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten, my love feeds on your love, beloved, and as long as you live it will be in your arms without leaving mine. I like you calm, as if you were absent I like you calm, as if you were absent, and you hear me far-off, and my voice does not touch you. It seems that your eyelids have taken to flying: it seems that a kiss has sealed up your mouth. Since all these things are filled with my spirit, you come from things, filled with my spirit.

You appear as my soul, as the butterfly s dreaming, and you appear as Sadness s word. I like you calm, as if you were distant, you are a moaning, a butterfly s cooing. You hear me far-off, my voice does not reach you. Let me be calmed, then, calmed by your silence. Let me commune, then, commune with your silence, clear as a light, and pure as a ring. You are like night, calmed, constellated. Your silence is star-like, as distant, as true. I like you calm, as if you were absent: distant and saddened, as if you were dead. One word at that moment, a smile, is sufficient. And I thrill, then, I thrill: that it cannot be so. XV From: Veinte poemas de amor I like you calm, as if you were absent, and you hear me far-off, and my voice does not touch you. It seems that your eyelids have taken to flying: it seems that a kiss has sealed up your mouth. Since all these things are filled with my spirit, you come from things, filled with my spirit. You appear as my soul, as the butterfly s dreaming, and you appear as Sadness s word. I like you calm, as if you were distant, you are a moaning, a butterfly s cooing. You hear me far-off, my voice does not reach you. Let me be calmed, then, calmed by your silence. Let me commune, then, commune with your silence, clear as a light, and pure as a ring. You are like night, calmed, constellated. Your silence is star-like, as distant, as true. I like you calm, as if you were absent: distant and saddened, as if you were dead. One word at that moment, a smile, is sufficient. And I thrill, then, I thrill: that it cannot be so. I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You I do not love you except because I love you; I go from loving to not loving you, From waiting to not waiting for you My heart moves from cold to fire. I love you only because it's you the one I love; I hate you deeply, and hating you Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you Is that I do not see you but love you blindly. Maybe January light will consume My heart with its cruel Ray, stealing my key to true calm. In this part of the story I am the one who Dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you, Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood. From Twenty Poems of Love

I can write the saddest lines tonight.

Write for example: The night is fractured and they shiver, blue, those stars, in the distance The night wind turns in the sky and sings. I can write the saddest lines tonight. I loved her, sometimes she loved me too. On nights like these I held her in my arms. I kissed her greatly under the infinite sky. She loved me, sometimes I loved her too. How could I not have loved her huge, still eyes. I can write the saddest lines tonight. To think I don t have her, to feel I have lost her. Hear the vast night, vaster without her. Lines fall on the soul like dew on the grass. What does it matter that I couldn t keep her. The night is fractured and she is not with me. That is all. Someone sings far off. Far off, my soul is not content to have lost her. As though to reach her, my sight looks for her. My heart looks for her: she is not with me The same night whitens, in the same branches. We, from that time, we are not the same. I don t love her, that s certain, but how I loved her. My voice tried to find the breeze to reach her. Another s kisses on her, like my kisses. Her voice, her bright body, infinite eyes. I don t love her, that s certain, but perhaps I love her. Love is brief: forgetting lasts so long. Since, on these nights, I held her in my arms, my soul is not content to have lost her. Though this is the last pain she will make me suffer, and these are the last lines I will write for her. Clenched Soul 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 fiesta of sunset in the distant mountain tops. Sometimes a piece of sun burned like a coin in my hand.

I remembered you with my soul clenched in that sadness of mine that you know. Where were you then? Who else was there? Saying what? Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly when I am sad and feel you are far away? The book fell that always closed at twilight and my blue sweater rolled like a hurt dog at my feet. Always, always you recede through the evenings toward the twilight erasing statues. CHANT TO BOLIVAR Our Father thou art in Heaven, in water, in air in all our silent and broad latitude everything bears your name, Father in our dwelling: your name raises sweetness in sugar cane Bolivar tin has a Bolivar gleam the Bolvar bird flies over the Bolivar volcano the potato, the saltpeter, the special shadows, the brooks, the phosphorous stone veins everything comes from your extinguished life your legacy was rivers, plains, bell towers your legacy is our daily bread, oh Father. TONIGHT I CAN WRITE THE SADDEST LINES The night is shattered and the blue stars shiver in the distance.' The night wind revolves in the sky and sings. Tonight I can write the saddest lines. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. Through nights like this one I held her in my arms I kissed her again and again under the endless sky. She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too. How could one not have loved her great still eyes. Tonight I can write the saddest lines. To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her. To hear the immense night, still more immense without her. And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture. What does it matter that my love could not keep her. The night is shattered and she is not with me. This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance. My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her. My sight searches for her as though to go to her. My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees. We, of that time, are no longer the same. 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 voide. 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 sould is not satisfied that it has lost her. Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer and these the last verses that I write for her. A SONG OF DESPAIR The memory of you emerges from the night around me. The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea. Deserted like the wharves at dawn. It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one! Cold flower heads are raining over my heart. Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked. In you the wars and the flights accumulated. From you the wings of the song birds rose. You swallowed everything, like distance. Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank! It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss. The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse. Pilot's dread, fury of blind driver, turbulent drunkenness of love, in you everything sank! In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded. Lost discoverer, in you everything sank! You girdled sorrow, you clung to desire, sadness stunned you, in you everything sank! I made the wall of shadow draw back, beyond desire and act, I walked on. Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost, I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you. Like a jar you housed infinite tenderness. and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar. There was the black solitude of the islands, and there, woman of love, your arms took me in.

There was thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit. There were grief and ruins, and you were the miracle. Ah woman, I do not know how you could contain me in the earth of your soul, in the cross of your arms! How terrible and brief my desire was to you! How difficult and drunken, how tensed and avid. Cemetery of kisses, there is still fire in your tombs, still the fruited boughs burn, pecked at by birds. Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs, oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bodies. Oh the mad coupling of hope and force in which we merged and despaired. And the tenderness, light as water and as flour. And the word scarcely begun on the lips. This was my destiny and in it was my voyage of my longing, and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank! Oh pit of debris, everything fell into you, what sorrow did you not express, in what sorrow are you not drowned! From billow to billow you still called and sang. Standing like a sailor in the prow of a vessel. You still flowered in songs, you still brike the currents. Oh pit of debris, open and bitter well. Pale blind diver, luckless slinger, lost discoverer, in you everything sank! It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour which the night fastens to all the timetables. The rustling belt of the sea girdles the shore. Cold stars heave up, black birds migrate. Deserted like the wharves at dawn. Only tremulous shadow twists in my hands. Oh farther than everything. Oh farther than everything. It is the hour of departure. Oh abandoned one! AND BECAUSE LOVE BATTLES 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 will then associate the danger of my life, which you know and which with your passion you shared. And good, this danger is danger of love, of complete love for all life, for all lives, and if this love brings us the death and the prisons, I am sure that your big eyes, as when I kiss them, will then close with pride, into double pride, love, with your pride and my pride. But to my ears they will come before to wear down the tour of the sweet and hard love which binds us, and they will say: The one you love, is not a woman for you, Why do you love her? I think you could find one more beautiful, more serious, more deep, more other, you understand me, look how she s light, and what a head she has, and look at how she dresses, and etcetera and etcetera . And I in these lines say: Like this I want you, love, love, Like this I love you, as you dress and how your hair lifts up and how your mouth smiles, light as the water of the spring upon the pure stones, Like this I love you, beloved. To bread I do not ask to teach me but only not to lack during every day of life. I don t know anything about light, from where it comes nor where it goes, I only want the light to light up, I do not ask to the night explanations, I wait for it and it envelops me, And so you, bread and light And shadow are.

You came to my life with what you were bringing, made of light and bread and shadow I expected you, and Like this I need you, Like this I love you, and to those who want to hear tomorrow that which I will not tell them, let them read it here, and let them back off today because it is early for these arguments. Tomorrow we will only give them a leaf of the tree of our love, a leaf which will fall on the earth like if it had been made by our lips like a kiss which falls from our invincible heights to show the fire and the tenderness of a true love.