“A song of despairThe memory of you emerges from the night around me.The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.Deserted like the dwarves at dawn.It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one!Cold flower heads are raining over my heart.Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked.In you the wars and the flights accumulated.From you the wings of the song birds rose.You swallowed everything, like distance.Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank!It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss.The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse.Pilot's dread, fury of blind driver,turbulent drunkenness of love, in you everything sank!In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded.Lost discoverer, in you everything sank!You girdled sorrow, you clung to desire,sadness stunned you, in you everything sank!I made the wall of shadow draw back,beyond desire and act, I walked on.Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost,I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you.Like a jar you housed infinite tenderness.and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar.There was the black solitude of the islands,and there, woman of love, your arms took me in.There was thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit.There were grief and ruins, and you were the miracle.Ah woman, I do not know how you could contain mein the earth of your soul, in the cross of your arms!How terrible and brief my desire was to 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.Oh the mad coupling of hope and forcein which we merged and despaired.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 my voyage of my longing,and in it my longing fell, in you 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 brike the currents.Oh pit of debris, open and bitter well.Pale blind diver, luckless slinger,lost discoverer, in you everything sank!It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hourwhich 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 tremulous shadow twists in my hands.Oh farther than everything. Oh farther than everything.It is the hour of departure. Oh abandoned one!”

“Pale blind diver, luckless slinger, lost discoverer, in you everything sank!”

“Todo te lo tragaste, como la lejania, como el mar, como el tiempo... Ese fue mi destino y en el viajo mi anhelo, y en el mi anhelo, todo en ti fue naufragio! (You swallowed everything, like distance, like the sea, like time. This was my destiny and it was the voyage of my longing, in it my longing fell, in you everything sank.)”

“Body of a woman, white hills, white thighs,you look like a world, lying in surrender.My rough peasant's body digs in youand makes the son leap from the depth of the earth.I was lone like a tunnel. The birds fled from me,and nigh swamped me with its crushing invasion.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.Body of skin, of moss, of eager and firm milk.Oh the goblets of the breast! Oh the eyes of absence!Oh the roses of the pubis! Oh your voice, slow and sad!Body of my woman, I will persist in your grace.My thirst, my boundless desire, my shifting road!Dark river-beds where the eternal thirst flowsand weariness follows, and the infinite ache.”

“LXXIXWhen I die, I want your hands on my eyes.I want the light and wheat of your beloved hands to pass their freshness over me once more.I want to feel the softness that changed my destiny.I want you to live while I wait for you, asleep.I want your ears still to hear the wind, I want you to sniff the sea's aroma that we loved together,to continue to walk on the sand we walk on.I want what I love to continue to live,and you whom I love and sang above everything else.to continue to flourish, full-flowered.So that you can reach everything my love directs you to. So that my shadow can travel along in your hair,so that everything can learn the reason for my song.”

“I want you to knowone thing. You know how this is: if I look at the crystal moon, at the red branch of the slow autumn at my window, if I touch near the fire the impalpable ash or the wrinkled body of the log, everything carries me to you, as if everything that exists, aromas, light, metals, were little boats that sail toward those isles of yours that wait for me. Well, now, if little by little you stop loving me I shall stop loving you little by little. If suddenly you forget me do not look for me, for I shall already have forgotten you. If you think it long and mad, the wind of banners that passes through my life, and you decide to leave me at the shore of the heart where I have roots, remember that on that day, at that hour, I shall lift my arms and my roots will set off to seek another land. But if each day, each hour, you feel that you are destined for me with implacable sweetness, if each day a flower climbs up to your lips to seek me, ah my love, ah my own, in me all that fire is repeated, in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten, my love feeds on your love, beloved, and as long as you live it will be in your arms without leaving mine.”

“Of everything I have seen, it's you I want to go on seeing: of everything I've touched, it's your flesh I want to go on touching. I love your orange laughter. I am moved by the sight of you sleeping. What am I to do, love, loved one? I don't know how others love or how people loved in the past. I live, watching you, loving you. Being in love is my nature.”