"My ugly one, I love you for your waist of gold,my beauty, I love you because of a wrinkle on your forehead,love, I love you because you are clear and dark."

"Take bread away from me, if you wish,take air away, butdo not take from me your laughter."

"Love is so short, forgetting is so long."

"I was born anew, owner of my own darkness."

"Tonight I can write the saddest linesI loved her, and sometimes she loved me too."

"It's well known that he who returns never left."

"I like for you to be still: it is as though you are absentdistant and full of sorrow as though you had diedOne word then, one smile is enoughAnd I'm happy; happy that it's not true."

"Fear envelops bones like new skin,envelops blood with night's skin,the earth moves beneath the soles of the feet -it is not your hair but the terror in your head,like long hair made of vertical nails,and what you see are not shattered streets,but rather, within you, your own crushed walls,your frustrated infinity, again the city comescrashing down: in your silence, only water's threatis heard, and in the waterdrowned horses gallop through your death."

"I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests."

"I remember you with my soul clenched in that sadness of mine that you know."

"I touched you and my life stopped."

"Solo con una ardiente paciencia conquistaremos la espléndida ciudad que dará luz, justicia y dignidad a todos los hombres. Así la poesía no habrá cantado en vano."

"Do you not hear the constant victory,in the human footraceof time, slow as fire,sure, and thick and Herculeanaccumulating its volume and adding its sad fiber?"

"But from each crime are born bullets that will one day seek out in you where the heart lies."

"Sufre mas el que espera siempreque aquel que nunca espero a nadie?Does he who is always waiting suffer more than he who's never waited for anyone?"

"Leaning into the afternoons I cast my sad netstowards 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 eyesthat 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 netsto that sea that is thrashed by your oceanic eyes.The birds of night peck at the first starsthat flash like my soul when I love you.The night gallops on its shadowy mareshedding blue tassels over the land."

"I want to do to you what spring does with the cherry trees."

"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."

"Quiero hacer contigo lo que la primavera hace con los cerezos."

"I am no longer in love with her, that's certain, but maybe I love her. Love is so short, forgetting is so long."

"Green was the silence, wet was the light,the month of June trembled like a butterfly."

"Your eyes have the colour of the moon."

"Love! Love until the night collapses!"

"The books that help you most are those which make you think that most. The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty."

"And everything burned in blue, everything a star."

"I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you."

"You know how this is:if I lookat the crystal moon, at the red branchof the slow autumn at my window,if I touchnear the firethe impalpable ashor the wrinkled body of the log,everything carries me to you,as if everything that exists,aromas, light, metals,were little boatsthat sailtoward those isles of yours that wait for me."

"Naked you are blue like the night in Cuba,you have vines and stars in your hair."

"I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close."

"De pronto no puedo decírtelo que yo te debo decir, hombre, perdóname; sabrás que aunque no escuches mis palabras no me eché a llorar ni a dormir y que contigo estoy sin verte desde hace tiempo y hasta el fin. I can't just suddenly tell you what I should be telling you, friend, forgive me; you know that although you don't hear my words, I wasn't asleep or in tears, that I am with you without seeing you for a good long time and until the end."

"I had no more alphabetthan the journeying of the swallows,the pure and tiny waterof the small, fiery birdthat dances rising from the pollen."

"Do tears not yet spilledwait in small lakes?Or are they invisible riversthat run toward sadness?"

"Te amo sin saber como, ni cuándo, ni de donde, te amo directamente sin problemas ni orgullo: así te amo porque no sé amar de otra manera, sino así de este modo en que no soy ni eres, tan cerca que tu mano sobre mi pecho es mía, tan cerca que se cierran tus ojos con mi sueño."

"It was at that agethat poetry came in search of me."

"Like them you are tall and taciturn, and you are sad, all at once, like a voyage."

"I don't want to go on being a root in the dark,vacillating, stretched out, shivering with sleep,downward, in the soaked guts of the earth,absorbing and thinking, eating each day."

"Las lágrimas que no se lloranesperan en pequeños lagos?O serán ríos invisiblesque corren hacia la tristeza?"

"The days aren't discarded or collected, they are beesthat burned with sweetness or maddenedthe sting: the struggle continues,the journeys go and come between honey and pain.No, the net of years doesn't unweave: there is no net.They don't fall drop by drop from a river: there is no river.Sleep doesn't divide life into halves,or action, or silence, or honor:life is like a stone, a single motion,a lonesome bonfire reflected on the leaves,an arrow, only one, slow or swift, a metalthat climbs or descends burning in your bones."

"And I, infinitesimal being, drunk with the great starry void, likeness, image of mystery, I felt myself a pure part of the abyss, I wheeled with the stars, my heart broke loose on the wind."

"I want to see the thirstinside the syllablesI want to touch the firein the sound:I want to feel the darknessof the cry. I wantwords as roughas virgin rocks. - Verb."

"I do not love you except because I love you;I go from loving to not loving you,From waiting to not waiting for youMy heart moves from cold to fire."

"I love you as the plant that never blooms but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers; thanks to your love a certain solid fragrence risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body. and: No one can stop the river of your hands, your eyes and their sleepiness, my dearest. You are the trembling of time, which passes between the vertical light and the darkening sky. and: From the stormy archipelagoes I brought my windy accordian, waves of crazy rain, the habitual slowness of natural things: they made up my wild heart."

"Por que en las epocas oscurasse escribe con tinta invisible?Why in the darkest agesdo they write with invisible ink?"

"So the freshness lives onin a lemon,in the sweet-smelling house of the rind,the proportions, arcane and acerb."

"At night I dream that you and I are two plantsthat grew together, roots entwined,and that you know the earth and the rain like my mouth,since we are made of earth and rain."

"Over your breasts of motionless current,over your legs of firmness and water,over the permanence and the prideof your naked hairI want to be, my love, now that the tears arethrowninto the raucous baskets where they accumulate,I want to be, my love, alone with a syllableof mangled silver, alone with a tip of your breast of snow."

"Peace goes into the making of a poem as flour goes into the making of bread."

"Como se reparten el sol en el naranjo las naranjas?How do the oranges divide up sunlight in the orange tree?"

"Joyful, joyful, joyful,as only dogs know how to be happywith only the autonomyof their shameless spirit."

"Well, now,if little by little you stop loving meI shall stop loving you little by little.If suddenlyyou forget medo not look for me,for I shall already have forgotten you."