Enraptured

Enraptured
My love is a child crying,
reluctant to leave your arms,
I leave it to you forever--
you are my chosen one.
You are my chosen one, more tempered by winds than thin trees in the south,
a hazel in August;
as a great bakery.
You have an earth heart
but your hands are from heaven.
You are red and spicy,
you are white and salty
like pickled onions,
you are a laughing piano
with every human note;
and music runs over me
from your eyelashes and your hair.
I wallow in your gold shadow,
I'm enchanted by your ears
as though I had seen them before
in underwater coral.

Overflowing

Overflowing

So long as I have soul
So long will I celebrate you

Since you became my soul
I was like a dam bursting with emotion

But I could tell no one
But since you swam back up my river

I had to burst my banks
And release my generation of feelings

Ode with a lament Pablo Neruda

Ode with a Lament

Oh child among the roses, oh pressure of doves,
oh jail of fish and rosebushes,
your soul is a bottle full of thirsting salt
and a bell of grapes, your skin.

Unfortunately, I’ve nothing to give you except
the nails of my fingers
or eyelashes, or pianos melted by love
or dreams that pour from my heart in torrents,
dreams covered with dust that gallop like black riders,
dreams charged full of velocities and misfortunes.

I love you only with kisses and red poppies,
with rain soaked wreaths,
my eyes full of ember-red horses and yellow dogs.

I love you only with waves on my shoulder,
amid random explosions of sulphur and waters lost in thought,
swimming against cemeteries that circulate in certain rivers,
drowned pasture flooding the sad, chalky tombstones,
swimming against the cemeteries of the submerged hearts
which run in certain rivers
with wet grass growing over the sad plaster tombs
and faded lists of unburied children.

There’s so much death, so many funereal events
in my destitute passions, my desolate kisses,
there’s water that falls in my head,
while my hair grows out,
a water like time, a black, undammed water
with a nocturnal voice, with a parrot’s
shriek in rain, with the interminable
shadow of a wet wing shielding my bones:
while I dress myself, while
incessantly I survey myself in mirrors and window panes,

I hear someone following me me, sobbing out my name
in a wounded voice putrefied by time.

You are standing over the earth,
full of teeth and lightning.
You propagate kisses and kill the ants.
You weep tears of health, from an onion, a bee,
from your burning alphabet.

You’re like a sword, blue and green
and at my touch you undulate like a river.

Come to my soul, dressed in white, with a branch
of bleeding roses and goblets of ash,
come near with an apple and a horse,
because therein lies a dark living room and a shattered candelabrum,
a few bent chairs waiting on winter,
and a dove, dead, with a number.

Pablo Neruda. Seected Poems Penguin Poetry

Sense less

Senseless

Why do I not see
When my eyes are full
Of images of you?

Why do I not hear
When my heart is full
Of your words and your song?

Why do I not dance
When my soul is full
Of your rhythm and your music?

Why do I not live
When all I want to do
Is love

You?

A quiet transformation

A quiet transformation

After the spirit soaring song
And soul stirring dance
Of talking to you

Arrives the unwelcome guest
Of the deathly silence
Of an abandoned heart

Even the graveyard
Is happier than I am at the moment
Because it has the company of kindred spirits

At least the wind seems to understand
As it howls outside my door
Offering to enter and commune with me


And even the rain seems to care
As it batters on my window
And offers to bathe me

But I am past caring
So I choose a memory
To give me the solace to return to my work

I know my arsenal of memories
Will be the armour
I need

To accept the unacceptable
To justify the unjustifiable
To deal with the undealable

To neologise when I haven’t the words
To say what I feel
About what has happened, is happening or will continue to happen

So I send you my email
Close the windows of my computer
And retire to bed

To practise for death.

Imbalance

I thought that when you left me
That time would heal me
Of my craving for you

But, Oh God, I was so wrong!

I thought that when the moments
Of missing you became days that became weeks that became years
That I would forget you

But, Oh God, I was so wrong!

I thought that when I incinerated your letters
Ripped up your photos, cremated your memories
That I would forget you

But, Oh God, I was so wrong!

I thought that when I married a loving sensuous woman
That her kisses and caresses would
Banish you from the core of my being

But, Oh God, I was so wrong!

I thought that nurturing the miracle of my child
Would stop me missing
The cries and laughs of our unborn children

But, Oh God, I was so wrong!

The only thing I got right in my life
Was how I felt about you

Isn't it ironic?

And isn't it ironic... don't you think
When you meet the girl of your dreams
But you're not the boy of hers

And isn't it ironic... don't you think
When the girl of your nightmares
Becomes the woman of your dreams

Isn't it ironic... don't you think?

Howling Lamb