Saturday, July 3, 2010

[0064]

This is my absolute favorite love sonnet by Neruda. I posted 2 stanzas before because I was too lazy to type it all, but I managed to find a translated version online that I could just copy+paste. Reading it just makes me so happy and sad at the same time. It's so beautiful; I can only imagine what it must feel like to be on the receiving end of these gorgeous words.

I don’t love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom and carries
hidden within itself the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I don’t know any other way of loving

but this, in which there is no I or you,
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.

-- Pablo Neruda

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