
morning, afternoon, evening
and night.
Morning / Mañana (Sonnets 1-32)
- 1. Matilde: the name of a plant, or a rock, or a wine
- 2. Love, what a long way, to arrive at a kiss
- 3. Bitter love, a violet with its crown
- 4. You will remember that leaping stream
- 5. I did not hold your night, or your air, or the dawn
- 6. Lost in the forest, I broke off a dark twig
- 7. Come with me, I said, and no one knew
- 8. If your eyes were not the color of the moon
- 9. There where the waves shatter on the restless rocks
- 10. This beauty is soft – as if music and wood
- 11. I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair
- 12. Full woman, flesh-apple, hot moon
- 13. The light that rises from your feet to you hair,
- 14. I don’t have time enough to celebrate your hair.
- 15. The earth has known you for a long time now:
- 16. I love the handful of the earth you are.
- 17. I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
- 18. You move through the mountain like a breeze,
- 19. While the huge seafoam of Isla Negra,
- 20. My ugly love, you’re a messy chestnut.
- 21. If only love would spread its savor through me!
- 22. Love, how often I loved you without seeing—
- 23. The fire for light, a rancorous moon for bread,
- 24. Love, love, the clouds went up the tower of the sky
- 25. Before I loved you, Love, nothing was my own:
- 26. Neither the color of Iquique’s awesome dunes,
- 27. Naked, you are simple as one of your hands,
- 28. Love, from seed to seed, from planet to planet,
- 29. You came from poverty, from the houses of the South,
- 30. You have the thick hair of a larch from the archipelago,
- 31. Little queen of my bones, I crown you
- 32. The house this morning—with its truths
Afternoon / Mediodía (Sonnets 33-53)
- 33. Love, we’re going home now,
- 34. You are the daughter of the sea, oregano’s first cousin,
- 35. Your hand flew from my eyes into the day.
- 36. My heart, queen of the beehive and the barnyard,
- 37. O love, O crazy sunbeam and purple premonition,
- 38. Your house sounds like a train at noon:
- 39. But I forgot that your hands fed the roots,
- 40. It was green, the silence; the light was moist;
- 41. January rough times, when the indifferent
- 42. Radiant days rolling on the water, intense as the inside
- 43. I hunt for a sign of you in all the others,
- 44. You must know that I do not love and that I love you,
- 45. Don’t go far off, not even for a day, because—
- 46. Of all the stars I admired, drenched
- 47. I want to look back and see you in the branches.
- 48. Two happy lovers make one bread,
- 49. It’s today: all of yesterday dropped away
- 50. Cotapos says your laughter drops
- 51. Your laugh: it reminds me of a tree
- 52. You sing, and your voice peels the husk
- 53. Here are the bread—the wine—the table—the house:
- 54. Luminous mind, bright devil
- 55. Thorns, shattered glass, sickness, crying: all day
- 56. Get used to seeing the shadow behind me, accept
- 57. They’re liars, those who say I lost the moon,
- 58. Among the broadswords of literary iron
- 59. Poor unlucky poets: whom both life and death
- 60. Those who wanted to wound me wounded you,
- 61. Love dragged its tail of pain,
- 62. Woe is me, woe is us, my dearest:
- 63. I walked: not only through the wasteland where the
- 64. My life was tinted purple by so much love,
- 65. Matilde, where are you? Down there I noticed,
- 66. I do not love—except because I love you:
- 67. The great rain from the South falls on Isla Negra
- 68. The girl made of wood didn’t come here on foot;
- 69. Maybe nothingness is to be without your presence,
- 70. Maybe—through I do not bleed—I am wounded,
- 71. Love crosses its islands, from grief to grief,
- 72. My love, winter returns to its billet,
- 73. Maybe you’ll remember that razor-faced man
- 74. Wet with the waters of August, the road
- 75. Here are the houses, the sea, the flag.
- 76. With the patience of a bear, Diego Rivera
- 77. Today is today, with the weight of all past time,
- 78. I have no never-again, I have no always. In the sand
Night / Noche (Sonnets 79-100)
- 79. By night, Love, tie your heart to mine, and the two
- 80. My love, I returned from travel and sorrow
- 81. And now you’re mine. Rest with your dreams in my dream.
- 82. As we close this nocturnal door, my love,
- 83. It’s good to feel you close in the night, Love,
- 84. Once again, Love, the day’s net extinguishes
- 85. The vague fog flows from the sea towards the streets
- 86. O Southern Cross, O clover of fragrant phosphorous:
- 87. Three birds of the sea, three sunbeams, three scissors
- 88. March returns with its secretive light,
- 89. When I die, I want your hands on my eyes:
- 90. I thought I was dying, I felt the cold up close
- 91. Age covers us like drizzle;
- 92. My love, if I die and you don’t—,
- 93. If some time your breast pauses, if something stops
- 94. If I die, survive me with such a pure force
- 95. Whoever loved as we did? Let us hunt
- 96. I think this time when you loved me
- 97. These days, one must fly—but where to?
- 98. And this word, this paper the thousand hands
- 99. Other days will come, the silence
- 100. In the center of the earth I will push aside