I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair

Don't go far off, not even for a day
Don't go far off, not even for a day,
Because I don't know how to say it - a day is long
And I will be waiting for you, as in
An empty station when the trains are
Parked off somewhere else, asleep.

Don't leave me, even for an hour, because then
The little drops of anguish will all run together,
The smoke that roams looking for a home will drift
Into me, choking my lost heart.

Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve
On the beach, may your eyelids never flutter
Into the empty distance. Don't LEAVE me for
A second, my dearest, because in that moment you'll
Have gone so far I'll wander mazily
Over all the earth, asking, will you
Come back? Will you leave me here, dying?

by Pablo Neruda

Fragments

There is the danger, of course, that nothing is new,
that I only remind you of something you used to know,
an echo of something you may have wanted
once - another him, perhaps.

The way one would steal your breath with a stunning kiss;
a scent you've known, daubed at my wrist or neck;
the way your spine curves to meet the need
of the body curled behind you -

perhaps I am a collection of all these things.
A patchwork of familiar fragments.
A note in my voice, reminiscent of a song you loved
but have forgotten how to name.

Have my fingers traced the same curious paths
as others that have known the glazed skin
of the thin scar on your left thigh?

Does the way you arch your back
belong to me?

- Jacob Sam La Rose

Sonnet XXV

I am generally not a poetry fan. Especially those angst-filled, juvenile, self-indulgent nonsensical prose that calls itself poetry just because it comes in broken paragraphs. Unfortunately self appointed poets that give birth to these are particularly prolific. I mean, if you want to rant, go get yourself a noose. Or a blog.

Nevertheless, I was introduced to Neruda completely by chance by a trivia partner who knows even more useless stuff than I do. Neruda is indeed a precious find. His works are dusty, old and unapologetically nostalgic. Earthy even. And the sadness - transcendental.

Before I loved you, love, nothing was my own:
I wavered through the streets, among
objects:
nothing mattered or had a name:
the world was made of air, which waited.

I knew rooms full of ashes,
tunnels where the moon lived,
rough warehouses that growled 'get lost',
questions that insisted in the sand.

Everything was empty, dead, mute,
fallen abandoned, and decayed:
inconceivably alien, it all

belonged to someone else - to no one:
till your beauty and your poverty
filled the autumn plentiful with gifts

Paulo Neruda