• Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair by Pablo Neruda, as translated by W. S. Merwin

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• "In the house of poetry, nothing remains except that which was written with blood to be listened to by blood."
• "(The poet must achieve a balance) between solitude and solidarity, between feeling and action, between intimacy of one's self, the intimacy of mankind, and the revelation of nature."
• "He reminded readers that even if they'd been to hell and back, they could still fall in love, experience beauty and rapture, nurse their indignities and personal tragedies, and still appreciate that 'the best poet is the man who delivers our daily bread.'" (from the introduction by Christina García)

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• "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."
• "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."
• "Ah vastness of pines, murmur of waves breaking, / slow play of lights, solitary bell,"
• "In you the rivers sing and my soul flees in them / as you desire, and you send it where you will."
• "On all sides I see your waist of fog, / and your silence hunts down my afflicted hours"
• "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 numberless heart of the wind / beating above our loving silence. // Orchestral and divine, resounding among the trees / like a language full of wars and songs."
• "So that you will hear me / my words / sometimes grow thin"
• "And I watch my words from a long way off. / They are more yours than mine. / They climb on my old suffering like ivy."
• "You fill everything, you fill everything."
• "Because 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."
• "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 remember you as you were in the last autumn. / You were the gray beret and the still heart. / In your eyes the flames of the twilight fought on. / And the leaves fell in the water of your soul."
• "I feel your eyes traveling, and the autumn is far off: / gray beret, voice of a bird, heart like a house"
• "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."
• "There in the highest blaze my solitude lengthens and flames, / its arms turning like a drowning man's."
• "The birds of night peck at the first stars / that flash like my soul when I love you."
• "I am the one without hope, the word without echoes, / he who lost everything and he who had everything."
• "Here is the solitude from which you are absent. / It is raining. The sea wind is hunting stray gulls. // The water walks barefoot in the wet streets. / From that tree the leaves complain as though they were sick."
• "Drunk with pines and long kisses, / like summer I steer the fast sail of the roses, / bent towards the death of the thin day, / stuck into my solid marine madness. // Pale and lashed to my ravenous water, / I cruise in the sour smell of the naked climate, / still dressed in gray and bitter sounds / and a sad crest of abandoned spray."
• "lunar, solar, burning and cold, all at once,"
• "We have lost even this twilight. / No one saw us this evening hand in hand / while the blue night dropped on the world."
• "Sometimes a piece of sun / burned like a coin between my hands. // 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 is always turned to at twilight / and my cape rolled like a hurt dog at my feet. // Always, always you recede through the evenings / towards where the twilight goes erasing statues."
• "Almost out of the sky, half of the moon / anchors between two mountains."
• "You were what the wind was making with illuminated leaves. / Behind the nocturnal mountains, white lily of conflagration, / ah I can say nothing! You were made of everything. "
• "Oh to follow the road that leads away from everything, / without anguish, death, winter waiting along it / with their eyes open through the dew."
• "What was sleeping above your soul will rise / out of my mouth to heaven. // In you is the illusion of each day. / You arrive like the dew to the cupped flowers. / You undermine the horizon with you absence."
• "I awoke and at times birds fled and migrated / that had been sleeping in your soul."
• "I have gone marking the atlas of your body / with crosses of fire."
• "Stories to tell you on the shore of evening, / sad and gentle doll, so that you should not be sad. / A swan, a tree, something far away and happy."
• "I who lived in a harbor from which I loved you. / The solitude crossed with dream and with silence."
• "Between the lips and the voice something goes dying. / Something with the wings of a bird, something of anguish and oblivion. / The way nets cannot hold water."
• "Even so, something sings in these fugitive words. / Something sings, something climbs to my ravenous mouth."
• "Sing, burn, flee, like a belfry at the hands of a madman. / My sad tenderness, what comes over you all at once?"
• "Every day you play with the light of the universe."
• " You are like nobody since I love you. / Let me spread you out among yellow garlands. / Who writes your name in letters of smoke among the stars of the south? / Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed. "
• "Suddenly the wind howls and bangs at my shut window. / The sky is crammed with shadowy fish. / Here all the winds let go sooner or later, all of them."
• "The birds go by, fleeing. / The wind. The wind. / I can contend only against the power of men. / The storm whirls dark leaves / and turns loose all the boats that were moored last night to the sky."
• "You are here. Oh, you do not run away. / You will answer me to the last cry."
• "How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me, / my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running. / So many times we have seen the morning star burn, kissing our eyes, / and over our heads the grey light unwind in turning fans."
• " I go so far as to think that you own the universe. / I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains, blue-bells / dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses. / I want to do with you / what spring does with the cherry trees. "
• "I like for you to be still: it is as though you were absent, / and you hear me from far away and my voice does not touch you."
• "As all things are filled with my soul / you emerge from the things, filled with my soul."
• " Let me come to be still in your silence. // And let me talk to you with your silence / that is bright as a lamp, simple as a ring. / You are like the night, with its stillness and constellations. / Your silence is that of a star, as remote and candid."
• "I like for you to be still: it is as though you were absent, / distant and full of sorrow as though you had died. / One word then, one smile, is enough. / And I am happy, happy that it's not true."
• "The lamp of my soul dyes your feet, / my sour wine is sweeter on your lips,"
• "Huntress of the depths of my eyes, your plunder / stills your nocturnal regard as though it were water."
• "My soul is born on the shore of your eyes of mourning. / In your eyes of mourning the land of dreams begins."
• "Thinking, tangling shadows in the deep solitude. / You are far away too, oh farther than anyone. / Thinking, freeing birds, dissolving images, / burying lamps."
• "Your presence is foreign, as strange to me as a thing. / I think, I explore great tracts of my life before you."
• "The sad rage, the shout, the solitude of the sea. / Headlong, violent, stretched towards the sky."
• "Who calls? What silence peopled with echoes?"
• "Thinking, burying lamps in the deep solitude. / Who are you, who are you?"
• "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."
• "Far away the sea sounds and resounds. / This is a port. / Here I love you. // Here I love you and the horizon hides you in vain. / I love you still among these cold things."
• " My life grows tired, hungry to no purpose. / I love what I do not have. You are so far. / My loathing wrestles with the slow twilights. / But night comes and starts to sing to me. / The moon turns its clockwork dream. / The biggest stars look at me with your eyes. / And as I love you, the pines in the wind / want to sing your name with their leaves of wire."
• "Everything bears me farther away, as though you were noon."
• " 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."
• "To hear the immense night, still more immense without her. / And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture."
• "This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance."
• "Love is so short, forgetting is so long."
• "The memory of you emerges from the night around me."
• "From you the wings of the song birds rose."
• "In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded."
• "I made the wall of shadow draw back, / beyond desire and act, I walked on."
• "There were thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit. / There were grief and the ruins, and you were the miracle."
• "How terrible and brief was my desire of 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."
• "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 the voyage of my longing, / and in it my longing fell, in your 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 broke in currents. / Oh pit of debris, open and bitter well."
• "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 the tremulous shadow twists in my hands."