Love....

And when you appear
all the rivers sound
in my body, bells
shake the sky,
and a hymn fills the world.


Only you and I,
only you and I, my love,
listen to it.
–Pablo Neruda, “The Queen"

…you and I together have gone down a single river
with linked mouths filled with salt and blood…
–Pablo Neruda, “Furies and Sorrows”

I have gone marking the atlas of your body
with crosses of fire.
My mouth went across: a spider, trying to hide.
In you, behind you, timid, driven by thirst.
–Pablo Neruda, “Twenty Love Poems: XIII”

I want
to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.
–Pablo Neruda, “Twenty Love Poems: XIV”

Who, if he walked
amid the multitudes to seek me
(for I’m a kernel from the human granary),
didn’t find you, pressed to my roots,
raised in the song of my blood?
–Pablo Neruda, “Love”

…these days are hard and radiant
and from them we harvest sweetness
kneaded with eyelids and spines.
–Pablo Neruda, “Love”