100 LOVE SONNETS by Pablo Neruda

“My beloved wife, I suffered while I was writing these misnamed “sonnets; they hurt me and caused me grief, but the happiness I feel in offering them to you is vast as a savanna.”

PABLO NERUDA (1959)

XI

“I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratúe.”

Translated by Stephen Tapscott
University of Texas Press, 1986