“If you should ask me where I've been all this timeI have to say "Things happen."I have to dwell on stones darkening the earth,on the river ruined in its own duration:I know nothing save things the birds have lost,the sea I left behind, or my sister crying.Why this abundance of places? Why does day lockwith day? Why the dark night swilling roundin our mouths? And why the dead?”

“When I see the sea againhas the sea seen me or hasn’t it seen me?Why the waves ask meThe same that I ask them?And why do they hit the rockWith such a futile enthusiasm?Don’t they get tired of repeatingtheir declaration to the sand?”

“I have slept with you all night long while the dark earth spins with the living and the dead, and on waking suddenly in the midst of the shadow my arm encircled your waist. Neither night nor sleep could separate us.”

“Here I came to the very edge where nothing at all needs saying...and every day on the balcony of the sea wings open fire is born and everything is blue again like morning.”

“On our earth, before writing was invented, before the printing press was invented, poetry flourished. That is why we know that poetry is like bread; it should be shared by all, by scholars and by peasants, by all our vast, incredible, extraordinary family of humanity.”

“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.”

“Where were you then?Who else was there?Saying what?Why will the whole of love come on me suddenlywhen I am sad and feel you are far away?”