Sonnet I
Matilde, name of plant or stone or wine,
of that which is born of the earth and endures,
word in whose growth the morning breaks,
in whose summer the light of lemons bursts forth.
In that name sail wooden ships
surrounded by swarms of navy-blue fire,
and those letters are the water of a river
that flows into my scorched heart.
Oh name uncovered beneath a tangle
like the door of an unknown tunnel
that communicates with the fragrance of the world!
Oh invade me with your burning mouth,
deceive me, if you wish, with your nocturnal eyes,
but in your name let me navigate and sleep.
Sonnet II
Love, how many paths until reaching a kiss,
what wandering loneliness until your company!
The trains keep rolling alone with the rain.
In Taltal, spring hasn't dawned yet.
But you and I, my love, are together,
together from clothes to roots,
together in autumn, in water, in hips,
until being only you, only me together.
To think it cost so many stones that the river carries,
the mouth of the Boroa water,
to think that separated by trains and nations
you and I simply had to love each other,
with everyone confused, with men and women,
with the earth that plants and educates the carnations.
Sonnet III
Rough love, violet crowned with thorns,
thicket among so many passions bristling,
spear of sorrows, corolla of anger,
why paths and how did you direct yourself to my soul?
Why did you precipitate your painful fire,
suddenly, among the cold leaves of my path?
Who taught you the steps that led you to me?
What flower, what stone, what smoke showed my abode?
The truth is that the dreadful night trembled,
dawn filled all the cups with its wine
and the sun established its celestial presence,
while cruel love besieged me without respite
until, lacerating me with swords and thorns,
it opened in my heart a burning path.
Sonnet IV
You will remember that capricious ravine
where pulsating aromas climbed,
occasionally a bird dressed
with water and slowness: a winter suit.
You will remember the gifts of the earth:
irascible fragrance, mud of gold,
herbs of the thicket, crazy roots,
bewitching thorns like swords.
You will remember the bouquet you brought,
bouquet of shadow and water in silence,
bouquet like a stone with foam.
And that time was like never and always:
we go where nothing awaits
and find everything that is waiting.
Sonnet V
May the night, the air, and the dawn not touch you,
only the earth, the virtue of the clusters,
the apples that grow listening to pure water,
the mud and resins of your fragrant land.
From Quinchamalí where your eyes were made
to your feet created for me at the Border,
you are the dark clay that I know:
on your hips, I touch all the wheat again.
Perhaps you didn't know, Araucanian,
that when before loving you, I forgot your kisses,
my heart remained remembering your mouth
and I was like a wounded one through the streets
until I understood that I had found,
love, my territory of kisses and volcanoes.
Sonnet VI
In the forests, lost, I cut a dark branch
and to my lips, thirsty, I lifted its whisper:
it was perhaps the voice of the crying rain,
a broken bell or a severed heart.
Something that from so far away seemed to me
gravely hidden, covered by the earth,
a deafened cry by immense autumns,
by the slightly open and damp darkness of the leaves.
But there, awakening from the forest's dreams,
the hazelnut branch sang beneath my mouth
and its wandering scent climbed through my senses
as if suddenly the roots were searching for me
that I abandoned, the lost earth of my childhood,
and I stopped, wounded by the wandering aroma.
Sonnet VII
"You will come with me," I said - without anyone knowing
where and how my painful state throbbed,
and for me, there was no carnation or barcarole,
nothing but a wound opened by love.
I repeated: come with me, as if I were dying,
and no one saw in my mouth the bleeding moon,
no one saw that blood rising into silence.
Oh love, now let's forget the star with thorns!
That's why when I heard your voice repeating,
"You will come with me" - it was as if you unleashed
pain, love, the fury of imprisoned wine
that from its submerged cellar ascended
and again in my mouth, I felt a taste of flame,
of blood and carnations, of stone and burn.
Sonnet VIII
If it weren't because your eyes have the color of the moon,
by day with clay, with work, with fire,
and you possess the agility of the air, imprisoned,
if it weren't because you are a week of amber,
if it weren't because you are the yellow moment
when autumn climbs up the vines
and you are still the bread that the fragrant moon
elaborates while strolling its flour through the sky,
oh, beloved, I would not love you!
In your embrace, I embrace what exists,
the sand, the time, the tree of rain,
and everything lives so that I may live:
without going so far, I can see it all:
I see in your life all that lives.
Sonnet IX
At the strike of the wave against the unyielding stone,
clarity explodes and establishes its rose,
and the circle of the sea is reduced to a cluster,
to a single drop of blue salt that falls.
Oh radiant magnolia unleashed in the foam,
magnetic traveler whose death blossoms
and eternally returns to be and not to be anything:
broken salt, dazzling marine movement.
Together you and I, my love, seal the silence,
while the sea destroys its constant statues
and topples its towers of impulse and whiteness,
because in the fabric of these invisible weaves
of the unleashed water, of the ceaseless sand,
we uphold the only besieged tenderness.
Here's the word-by-word translation of the poem:
Sonnet X
Gentle is the beauty as if music and wood,
agate, fabrics, wheat, transparent peaches,
had erected the fleeting statue.
Towards the wave she directs her contrary freshness.
The sea wets burnished feet copied
in the newly worked form in the sand
and now her feminine fire of rose
is a single bubble fought by the sun and the sea.
Oh, may nothing touch you except the cold salt!
May not even love destroy the untouched spring.
Beautiful, reverberation of indelible foam,
let your hips impose on the water
a new measure of swan or water lily
and may your statue sail through the eternal glass.
Or
"In my sky at twilight you are like a cloud
and your form and color are the way I love them.
You are mine, mine, woman with sweet lips
and in your life my infinite dreams live.
The lamp of my soul dyes your feet,
the sour wine is sweeter on your lips,
oh reaper of my evening song,
how solitary dreams believe you belong to me!
You are mine, mine, I go shouting it to the afternoon's
wind, and the wind hauls on my widowed voice.
Huntress of the depth of my eyes, your plunder
stills your nocturnal regard as though it were water.
You are taken in the net of my music, my love,
and my nets of music are wide as the sky."
Sonnet XI
"Gentle is the beautiful as if music and wood,
agate, fabrics, wheat, transparent peaches,
had erected the fleeting statue.
Towards the wave directs its contrary freshness.
The sea wets burnished feet copied
in the newly worked form in the sand
and now her feminine fire of rose
is a single bubble that the sun and the sea fight.
Oh, may nothing touch you except the cold salt!
May not even love destroy the untouched spring.
Beautiful, reverberation of the indelible foam,
let your hips impose on the water
a new measure of swan or water lily
and may your statue sail through the eternal glass."
OR
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 Quitratue.
Sonnet XII
Full woman, fleshy apple, hot moon,
dense scent of crushed seaweed, mud, and light,
what dark clarity opens between your columns?
What ancient night does man touch with his senses?
Oh, to love is a journey with water and stars,
with suffocated air and sudden floury tempests:
to love is a battle of lightning bolts
and two bodies defeated by a single honey.
Kiss by kiss, I travel your little infinity,
your margins, your rivers, your tiny villages,
and the genital fire transformed into delight
runs through the thin pathways of blood
until it rushes like a nocturnal carnation,
until it is and is not but a ray in the shadow.
Sonnet XIII
The light that from your feet rises to your hair,
the fullness that envelops your delicate form,
is not of marine mother-of-pearl, never of cold silver:
you are of bread, of bread loved by fire.
The flour raised its granary with you
and increased, augmented by auspicious age,
when grains doubled your bosom,
my love was the coal working in the earth.
Oh, bread your forehead, bread your legs, bread your mouth,
bread that I devour and is born with light each morning,
beloved, banner of the bakeries,
fire gave you a lesson,
from the flour, you learned to be sacred,
and from bread, the language and aroma.
Sonnet XIV
I lack time to celebrate your hair.
One by one, I must count them and praise them:
other lovers want to live with certain eyes,
I only want to be your hairdresser.
In Italy, they baptized you Medusa
for the rippling and high light of your hair.
I call you my disheveled and tangled one:
my heart knows the gates of your hair.
When you get lost in your own hair,
don't forget me, remember that I love you,
don't leave me lost, wandering without your hair
through the shadowy world of all the roads
that only hold shadows, transient pains,
until the sun rises on the tower of your hair.
Sonnet XV
For a long time, the earth has known you:
you are compact like bread or wood,
you are a body, a cluster of secure substance,
you have the weight of acacia, of golden legume.
I know you exist not only because your eyes fly
and illuminate things like an open window,
but because they made you of clay and baked you
in Chillán, in a bewildered adobe kiln.
Beings spill like air or water or cold
and they are vague, they fade at the touch of time,
as if before being dead, they were already scattered.
You will fall with me like a stone in the tomb
and so, through our love that was not consumed,
the earth will continue living with us.
Sonnet XVI
I love the patch of earth that you are,
because from the planetary meadows
I don't have another star. You repeat
the multiplication of the universe.
Your wide eyes are the light I have
from defeated constellations,
your skin pulses like the paths
traversed in the rain by the meteor.
From so much moon your hips were for me,
from all the sun your deep mouth and its delight,
from so much burning light like honey in the shadow
your heart burned by long red rays,
and thus I travel the fire of your form by kissing you,
small and planetary, dove and geography.
Sonnet XVII
I don't love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz
or an arrow of carnations spreading fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you like the plant that doesn't bloom but holds
within itself, hidden, the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, in my body lives
the tight aroma that rose from the earth.
I love you without knowing how, nor when, nor from where,
I love you directly, without problems or pride:
thus, I love you because I don't know how to love any other way,
but this way in which I am not nor you are,
so close that your hand on my chest is mine,
so close that your eyes close with my dream.
Sonnet XVIII
Through the mountains, you go as the breeze comes,
or the swift current that descends from the snow,
or perhaps your pulsating hair affirms
the lofty ornaments of the sun in the thicket.
All the light of the Caucasus falls upon your body
like in an endless small vessel
where the water changes its attire and song
with each transparent movement of the river.
Through the mountains, the ancient warrior's path
and below, fiercely shining like a sword,
the water amid walls of mineral hands,
until suddenly from the forests you receive
the branch or lightning bolt of blue flowers
and the unprecedented arrow of a wild aroma.
Sonnet XIX
While the great foam of Isla Negra,
the blue salt, the sun in the waves drench you,
I observe the labors of the wasp
engaged in the honey of its universe.
It goes and comes, balancing its straight and blond flight
as if sliding on an invisible wire
the elegance of dance, the thirst of its waist,
and the murders of the malevolent sting.
Of petroleum and orange is its rainbow,
it searches like a plane among the grass,
with a sound of a wheat spike, it flies, disappears,
while you emerge from the sea, naked,
and return to the world filled with salt and sun,
a reverberating statue and sword of the sand.
Sonnet XX
My ugly one, you are a disheveled chestnut,
my beautiful one, you are lovely like the wind,
my ugly one, your mouth could make two,
my beautiful one, your kisses are fresh like watermelons.
My ugly one, where are your breasts hidden?
They are minimal like two wheat cups.
I'd like to see two moons on your chest:
the gigantic towers of your sovereignty.
My ugly one, the sea doesn't have your nails in its store,
my beautiful one, flower by flower, star by star,
wave by wave, love, I've counted your body:
my ugly one, I love you for your waist of gold,
my beautiful one, I love you for a wrinkle on your forehead,
love, I love you for clear and for dark.
Sonnet XXI
Oh, may all the love propagate in me from your mouth,
may I not suffer another moment without spring,
I sold nothing but my hands to pain,
now, beloved, let me remain with your kisses.
Cover the light of the open month with your aroma,
close the doors with your hair,
and as for me, don't forget that if I wake and cry,
it's because in dreams, I am only a lost child
searching among the leaves of the night for your hands,
the touch of wheat that you convey to me,
a gleaming abduction of shadow and energy.
Oh, beloved, and nothing but shadow
where you accompany me in your dreams
and tell me the time of the light.
Sonnet XXII
How many times, love, I loved you without seeing you and perhaps without memory,
without recognizing your gaze, without looking at you, centaur,
in opposite regions, in a scorching midday:
you were only the aroma of the cereals I love.
Maybe I saw you, I supposed you while passing, raising a cup
in Angol, in the light of the June moon,
or you were the waist of that guitar
I played in the darkness and sounded like the boundless sea.
I loved you without knowing it, and I sought your memory.
In empty houses, I entered with a lantern to steal your portrait.
But I already knew what it was like. Suddenly,
while you were with me, I touched you, and my life stopped:
before my eyes, you were there, reigning over me, and you reign.
Like a fire in the forests, fire is your kingdom.
Sonnet XXIII
Fire was light, and the resentful moon was bread,
the jasmine doubled its starry secret,
and the gentle pure hands of terrible love
brought peace to my eyes and sun to my senses.
Oh love, how suddenly, from the torn places,
you made the building of sweet steadfastness,
you defeated the malicious and jealous nails,
and today, in front of the world, we are like a single life.
Thus it was, thus it is, and thus it will be until when,
wild and sweet love, beloved Matilde,
time shows us the final flower of the day.
Without you, without me, without light, we will no longer be:
then beyond the earth and the shadow,
the radiance of our love will still be alive.
Sonnet XXIV
Love, love, the clouds to the tower of the sky
rose like triumphant laundresses,
and everything burned in blue, everything became a star:
the sea, the ship, the day were banished together.
Come and see the cherry trees of the starry water
and the round key of the swift universe,
come touch the fire of the instantaneous blue,
come before its petals are consumed.
There is nothing here but light, quantities, clusters,
space opened by the virtues of the wind
to deliver the final secrets of the foam.
And among so many celestial blues, submerged,
our eyes are lost, barely guessing
the powers of the air, the submarine keys.
Sonnet XXV
Before loving you, love, nothing was mine:
I hesitated through the streets and things:
nothing counted or had a name:
the world belonged to the air that awaited.
I knew ashen halls,
tunnels inhabited by the moon,
cruel hangars bidding farewell,
questions persisting in the sand.
Everything was empty, dead, and mute,
fallen, abandoned, and declined,
everything was inalienably alien,
everything was others' and no one's,
until your beauty and your poverty
filled autumn with gifts.
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