“With which stars do they go on speaking,the rivers that never reach the sea?”

“Then I speak to her in a language she has never heard, I speak to her in Spanish, in the tongue of the long, crepuscular verses of Díaz Casanueva; in that language in which Joaquín Edwards preaches nationalism. My discourse is profound; I speak with eloquence and seduction; my words, more than from me, issue from the warm nights, from the many solitary nights on the Red Sea, and when the tiny dancer puts her arm around my neck, I understand that she understands. Magnificent language!”

“Si todos los rios son dulcesde donde saca sal el mar?If all rivers are sweetwhere does the sea get its salt?”

“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?”

“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?”

“If suddenly you do not exist,If suddenly you are not living,I shall go on living.I do not dare,I do not dare to write it,if you die.I shall go on living.”

“I walked around as you do, investigatingthe endless star, and in my net, during the night,I woke up naked, the only thing caught, a fish trapped inside the wind.”