As if you had died

I like you when you are quiet because it is as though you are absent, 

and you hear me from far away, and my voice does not touch you. 

It looks as though your eyes had flown away 

and it looks as if a kiss had sealed your mouth.

Like all things are full of my soul 

You emerge from the things, full of my soul. 

Dream butterfly, you look like my soul, 

and you look like a melancoly word.

I like you when you are quiet and it is as though you are distant. 

It is as though you are complaining, butterfly in lullaby. 

And you hear me from far away, and my voice does not reach you: 

let me fall quiet with your own silence.

Let me also speak to you with your silence 

Clear like a lamp, simple like a ring. 

You are like the night, quiet and constellated.

Your silence is of a star, so far away and solitary.

I like you when you are quiet because it is as though you are absent. 

Distant and painful as if you had died. 

A word then, a smile is enough. 

And I am happy, happy that it is not true.

Pablo Neruda

Clenched Soul

We have lost even this twilight.

No one saw us this evening hand in hand

while the blue night dropped on the world.

I have seen from my window

the fiesta of sunset in the distant mountain tops.

Sometimes a piece of sun

burned like a coin in my hand.

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 always closed at twilight

and my blue sweater rolled like a hurt dog at my feet.

Always, always you recede through the evenings

toward the twilight erasing statues. 

Pablo Neruda

Between the Shadow and the Soul

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,

or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.

I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,

in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms

but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;

thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,

risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.

I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;

so I love you because I know no other way than this: 

where I does not exist, nor you,

so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,

so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep. ” 

Sonnet XVII by Pablo Neruda