when I love you

The pictured 2012 Pablo Neruda collection - with translation by W.S. Merwin - is full of Neruda's best poetry ...

... here's one about the uncertainty, anticipation, and all-consuming nature of love - it stops me in my tracks every time I read it:


Leaning into the Afternoons ...

Leaning into the afternoons I cast my sad nets
towards your oceanic eyes.

There in the highest blaze my solitude lengthens and flames,
its arms turning like a drowning man's.

I send out red signals across your absent eyes
that smell like the sea or the beach by a lighthouse.

You keep only darkness, my distant female,
from your regard sometimes the coast of dread emerges.

Leaning into the afternoons I fling my sad nets
to that sea that is thrashed by your oceanic eyes.

The birds of night peck at the first stars
that flash like my soul when I love you.

The night gallops on its shadowy mare
shedding blue tassels over the land.

---                  
                                 
Pablo Neruda (1904 - 1973)

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