Ode and Germinations

I
The taste of your mouth and the color of your skin,
skin, mouth, my dearest fruit of these swift days,
tell it to me, were they always at your side
for years and for journeys and for moons and suns
and earth and weeping and rain and joy
or are they just now, just
coming out from your roots
as the water brings to the dry earth
germinations that it did not know,
or as to the lips of the forgotten jug
the taste of the earth rises in the water?

I don’t know, don’t tell it to me, you don’t know.
Nobody knows these things.
But as I bring all my senses closer
to the light of your skin, you disappear,
you dissolve like the citrus
smell of a fruit
and the heat of a road,
the smell of corn being shucked,
the honeysuckle of the pure evening,
the names of the dusty earth,
the infinite perfume of the homeland:
magnolia and thickets, blood and flour,
galloping horses,
the dusty moon of the hamlet,
nascent bread:
oh from your skin everything returns to my mouth,
returns to my heart, returns to my body,
and I return to being with you
the earth that you are:
in me you are the deepest springtime:
in you I remember how I germinate.

II
I should have felt your years
grow close to me in clusters
until you would have seen how the sun and the earth
had destined you for my hands of stone,
until grape against grape you would have made
the wine sing in my veins.
The wind or the horse
veering permitted
me to visit your childhood,
the same sky you have seen every day,
the same mud of the dark winter,
the endless intertwined boughs of the plum tree
and their dark-purple sweetness.
Only a few nighttime kilometers,
the dewy distances
of the country dawn,
a fistful of earth separated us, the transparent
walls
that we did not breach, so that life,
afterward, would put all
the oceans and the earth
between us, and we would come together
despite the space,
with each step seeking each other,
from one sea to another,
until I saw that the sky was igniting
and in the light your mane was flying
and you came to my kisses with the fire
of an unchained meteor
and as you melted into my blood, I received the sweetness
of the wild plum
of our childhood in my mouth,
and I pressed you to my chest as
if I were recovering the earth and life.

III
My wild girl, we have had
to recover time
and walk backward, in the traveled distance
of our lives, kiss by kiss,
gathering from one place what we gave
without happiness, discovering in another
the secret path
that brought your feet close to mine,
and this way under my mouth
you see again the dissatisfied plant
of your life extending its roots
toward my heart that was waiting for you.
And one by one the nights
between our separated cities
add themselves up to the night that unites us.
The light of each day,
its flame or its repose,
they give to us, taking them out of time,
and this way our treasure
in shadow or in light unearths itself,
and this way our kisses kiss life:
all love in our love encloses itself:
all thirst ends in our embrace.
Here we are at last face to face,
we have found each other,
we have lost nothing.
We have traveled over each other lip to lip,
we have exchanged a thousand times
between us death and life,
all that we brought with us
like dead medals
we throw into the depths of the sea,
all that we learned
was of no use to us:
we begin all over again,
we end all over again
death and life.
And here we survive,
pure, with the purity that we ourselves created,
wider than the earth that could not rid itself of us,
eternal as the fire that will burn
as long as life endures.

IV
When I have arrived here my hand hesitates.
Someone asks: “Tell me why, like the waves
of one and the same coast, your words
endlessly leave and return to her body?
Is she the only form that you love?”
And I respond: “My hands never have their fill
of her, my kisses never rest,
why would I withdraw the words
that repeat the trace of her beloved touch,
that close themselves off keeping
uselessly like the water in a net,
the surface and the temperature
of the purest wave of life?
And, love, your body is not only the rose
that in shadow or by moonlight arises,
is not only movement toward burning,
act of blood or petal of fire,
but to me you have brought
my territory, the mud of my childhood,
the waves of the oat plants,
the round skin of the dark fruit
that I tore from the forest,
aroma of woods and apples,
color of secluded waters where secret
fruits and deep leaves fall.
Oh love, your body rises
like the pure line of a vessel
from the earth that recognizes me
and when my senses found you
you throbbed as if inside you
the rain and the seeds were falling.
Oh that they would tell me how
I could ever abolish you
and allow that my hands without your form
tear the fire from my words.
My soft one, rest
your body on these lines that owe you
more than what you give me in your touch,
live in these words and repeat
in them the sweetness and the fire,
shiver amid their syllables,
sleep on my name as you have slept
on my heart, and this way tomorrow
my words will keep
the shape of your form
and he who hears them one day will get a gust
of wheat and poppies:
the body of love
will still be breathing on the earth!

V
Thread of wheat and water,
of crystal or of fire,
the word and the night,
the work and the ire,
the shadow and the tenderness,
bit by bit you have sewn it all
into my torn pockets,
and not only in the trembling zone
in which love and martyrdom are twins
like two fire bells,
did you wait for me, love of mine,
but also in the smallest
sweet chores.
The golden oil of Italy made your nimbus,
saint of the kitchen and sewing,
and your coquetry my little darling,
that would linger so long in the mirror,
with your hands whose
petals jasmine would envy,
washed the utensils and my clothes,
disinfected the wounds.
Love of mine, to my life
you came prepared
like a poppy and like a guerilla fighter:
silken is the splendor that I caress
with the hunger and the thirst
that only for you I brought to this world,
and behind the silk
the girl of iron
that will fight at my side.
Love, love, here we are.
Come thirst and metal close to my mouth.

VI
And because Love fights
not only in its burning agriculture
but in the mouths of men and women,
I will end up facing in battle
those who between my chest and your fragrance
want to lodge their dark plant.
Of me, nothing worse
will they tell you, love of mine,
than what I told you.
I lived in the meadows
before meeting you
and I did not wait for love but I was
laying in ambush and leapt on the rose.
What more can they tell you?
I am neither good nor bad but a man,
and so they will add up the dangers
of my life, which you know
and which with your passion you have shared.
And well, these dangers
are the dangers of love, of complete love
toward all life,
toward all lives,
and if this love brings us
death or prisons,
I am sure that your large eyes,
as when I kiss them,
will then close with pride,
with double pride, love,
with your pride and with mine.
But first to my ears they will come
to undermine the tower
of the sweet and strong love that binds us,
and they tell me: “That one
you love
is no woman for you,
why do you love her? I think
that you could find one more beautiful,
more serious, more profound,
more other, you understand me, look at her so light,
and what an empty head she has,
and look at her the way she dresses
and etcetera and etcetera.
And I in these lines say:
this way I love you, love,
love, this way I love you,
this way as you dress
and as your mane
rises and as
your mouth smiles,
light as the water
of the spring over the pure stones,
this way I love you, beloved.
I do not ask of bread that it teach me
but that it does not lack
through each day of life.
I know nothing of light, from where
it comes or to where it goes,
I only want light to illuminate,
I do not ask the night
for explanations,
I wait for it and it envelops me,
and this way you are bread
and light and shadow.
You have come to my life
with what you were bringing,
made
of light and bread and night I was waiting for you,
and this way I need you,
this way I love you,
and to all those who want to hear tomorrow
what I will not tell them, let them read it here,
and let them retreat today because it is early
for these arguments.
Tomorrow we will only give them
one leaf from the tree of our love, one leaf
that will fall upon the earth
as if made by our lips,
like a kiss falling
from our invincible heights
to show the fire and the tenderness
of a true love.

—Pablo Neruda