Rediscovering My Love for a Love Poem

From Pablo Neruda's Cien Sonetos de amor (1oo Love Sonnets)

XVII

No te amo como si fueras rosa de sal, topacio I don ’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,
o flecha de claveles que propagan el fuego: or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
te amo como se aman ciertas cosas oscuras, I love you as one loves certain obscure things,
secretamente, entre la sombra y el alma. secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

Te amo como la planta que no florece y lleva I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries
dentro de sí, escondida, la luz de aquellas flores, the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself,
y gracias a tu amor vive oscuro en mi cuerpo and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose
el apretado aroma que ascendió de la tierra. from the earth lives dimly in my body.

Te amo sin saber como, ni cuándo, ni de donde, I love you without knowing how, or when, or
from where
te amo directamente sin problemas ni orgullo: I love you directly without problems or pride:
así te amo porque no sé amar de otra manera, I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love,

sino así de este modo en que no soy ni eres, except in this form in which I am not nor are you,
tan cerca que tu mano sobre mi pecho es mía, so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,
tan cerca que se cierran tus ojos con mi sueño. so close that your eyes close with my dreams.

[English translation by Mark Eisner 2004, from City Lights' The Essential Neruda]

The Inner Spaces of Force, Pure Oneness

The Wide Ocean (from Canto General)
-Pablo Neruda

Ocean, if you were to give, a measure, a ferment, a fruit
of your gifts and destructions, into my hand,
I would choose your far-off repose, your contour of steel,
your vigilant spaces of air and darkness,
and the power of your white tongue,
that shatters and overthrows columns,
breaking them down to your proper purity.

Not the final breaker, heavy with brine,
that thunders onshore, and creates
the silence of sand, that encircles the world,
but the inner spaces of force,
the naked power of the waters,
the immoveable solitude, brimming with lives.
It is Time perhaps, or the vessel filled
with all motion, pure Oneness,
that death cannot touch, the visceral green
of consuming totality.

Only a salt kiss remains of the drowned arm,
that lifts a spray: a humid scent,
of the damp flower, is left,
from the bodies of men. Your energies
form, in a trickle that is not spent,
form, in retreat into silence.

The falling wave,
arch of identity, shattering feathers,
is only spume when it clears,
and returns to its source, unconsumed.

Your whole force heads for its origin.
The husks that your load threshes,
are only the crushed, plundered, deliveries,
that your act of abundance expelled,
all those that take life from your branches.

Your form extends beyond breakers,
vibrant, and rhythmic, like the chest, cloaking
a single being, and its breathings,
that lift into the content of light,
plains raised above waves,
forming the naked surface of earth.

You fill your true self with your substance.
You overflow curve with silence.

The vessel trembles with your salt and sweetness,
the universal cavern of waters,
and nothing is lost from you, as it is
from the desolate crater, or the bay of a hill,
those empty heights, signs, scars,
guarding the wounded air.

Your petals throbbing against the Earth,
trembling your submarine harvests,
your menace thickening the smooth swell,
with pulsations and swarming of schools,
and only the thread of the net raises
the dead lightning of fish-scale,
one wounded millimeter, in the space
of your crystal completeness.