"Absence is a house so vast that inside you will pass through its walls and hang pictures on the air."

"I repeated: come with me, as if I were dying,and no one saw in my mouth the moon that was bleeding,no one saw the blood that was rising into the silence.Oh love, now let us forget the star with thorns!"

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

"As if you were on fire from within.The moon lives in the lining of your skin."

"Poetry is an act of peace. Peace goes into the making of a poet as flour goes into the making of bread."

"Here I came to the very edge where nothing at all needs saying, everything is absorbed through weather and the sea, and the moon swam back, its rays all silvered, and time and again the darkness would be broken by the crash of a wave, and every day on the balcony of the sea, wings open, fire is born, and everything is blue again like morning."

"Well, nowIf little by little you stop loving meI shall stop loving youLittle by littleIf suddenly you forget meDo not look for meFor I shall already have forgotten youIf you think it long and mad the wind of banners that passes through my lifeAnd you decide to leave me at the shore of the heart where I have rootsRememberThat on that day, at that hour, I shall lift my armsAnd my roots will set off to seek another land."

"I cannot quit your love without dying."

"Girl lithe and tawny, the sun that formsthe fruits, that plumps the grains, that curls seaweedsfilled your body with joy, and your luminous eyesand your mouth that has the smile of the water.A black yearning sun is braided into the strandsof your black mane, when you stretch your arms.You play with the sun as with a little brookand it leaves two dark pools in your eyes."

"Everything is ceremony in the wild garden of childhood."

"Come see the cherry trees of a water constellationand the round key of the rapid universe,come touch the fire of instantaneous blue,come before its petals are consumed."

"I love you like the plant that does not bloomand carries in itself, hidden, the light of those flowers."

"Settle your perfect hips here and the bow of wet arrowsloosens into the night the petals that form your formlet your clay limbs climb the silence and its pale ladderrung by rung taking off with me in my dream.I can sense you scaling the shade tree that sings to the shadows.Dark is the world's night without you my love."

"With which stars do they go on speaking,the rivers that never reach the sea?"

"And tell me everything, tell chain by chain, and link by link, and step by step; sharpen the knives you kept hidden away, thrust them into my breast, into my hands, like a torrent of sunbursts, an Amazon of buried jaguars, and leave me cry: hours, days and years, blind ages, stellar centuries."

"I hunger for your sleek laugh and your hands the color of a furious harvest. I want to eat the sunbeams flaring in your beauty."

"Of so much moon were your hips to me,of all the sun your deep mouth and its delight,of so much burning light like honey in the shade."

"The word was born in the blood, grew in the dark body, beating, and took flight through the lips and the mouth. Farther away and nearer still, still it came from dead fathers and from wondering races, from lands which had turned to stone, lands weary of their poor tribes, for when grief took to the roads the people set out and arrived and married new land and water to grow their words again. And so this is the inheritance; this is the wavelength which connects us with dead men and the dawning of new beings not yet come to light."

"Beyond the earth and the shadowthe brightness of our love will stay alive."

"You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming."

"Then love knew it was called love. And when I lifted my eyes to your name, suddenly your heart showed me my way."

"Child who does not play is not a child, but the man who does not play has lost forever the child who lived within him and who he will miss terribly."

"Our love was bornoutside the walls,in the wind,in the night,in the earth,and that's why the clay and the flower,the mud and the rootsknow your name."

"Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero tal vez la quiero.Es tan corto el amor, y es tan largo el olvido."

"Then I speak to her in a language she has never heard, I speak to her in Spanish, in the tongue of the long, crepuscular verses of DAaz Casanueva; in that language in which JoaquAn Edwards preaches nationalism. My discourse is profound; I speak with eloquence and seduction; my words, more than from me, issue from the warm nights, from the many solitary nights on the Red Sea, and when the tiny dancer puts her arm around my neck, I understand that she understands. Magnificent language!"

"Dark is the world's night without you my love."

"And one by one the nights between our separated cities are joined to the night that unites us."

"From that terrible love the soft pure handsgave peace to my eyes and sun to my senses."

"So close that your hand upon my chest is mine,so close that your eyes close with my sleep."

"I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul."

"You, in bloom, heart, beloved,you are like the foliage of the sky over my eyesand I look at you lying on the earth."

"Oh, beloved, and there is nothing but shadowswhere you accompany me in your dreamsand tell me the hour of light."

"A book,a book fullof human touches,of shirts,a bookwithout loneliness, with menand tools,a bookis victory."

"I have hunger for your mouth, for your voice, for your hair."

"By night, Love, tie your heart to mine, and the two together in their sleep will defeat the darkness."

"No, my dog used to gaze at me,paying me the attention I need,the attention requiredto make a vain person like me understandthat, being a dog, he was wasting time,but, with those eyes so much purer than mine,he'd keep on gazing at mewith a look that reserved for me aloneall his sweet and shaggy life,always near me, never troubling me,and asking nothing."

"And the heart sounds like a sour conch,calls, oh sea, oh lament, oh molten panic,scattered in the unlucky and disheveled waves:the sea reports sonorouslyon its languid shadows, its green poppies."

"You, my friend, could be the smoke's daughter, you who may not have known you were born of fire and rage,lightning over flaming lava etched your violet mouth,your sex in the scorched oak's moss like a ring in a nest,your fingers there in the flames, your compact bodyrose from leaves of fire that make me recallthere were bakers in your family tree,you're still the rainforest's bread, ash from violent wheat."

"Soy el desesperado, la palabra sin ecos, el que lo perdiA2 todo, y el que todo lo tuvo."

"In this part of the story I am the one whodies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,because I love you, Love, in fire and in blood."

"Escondeme en tus brazospor esta noche sola,mientras la lluvia rompecontra el mar y la tierrasu boca innumerable."

"Donde termina el arco iris,en tu alma o en el horizonte?Where does the rainbow end,in your soul or on the horizon?"

"I shivered in thosesolitudeswhen I heardthe voiceofthe saltin the desert."

"You are like nobody since I love you."

"While I'm writing, I'm far away;and when I come back, I've gone."

"I love the piece of earth you are,because in all the planetary prairiesI do not have another star. You repeatthe multiplication of the universe."

"By night, beloved, tie your heart to mineand let them both in dreams defeat the darkness."

"Where were you then?Who else was there?Saying what?Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly when I am sad and feel you are far away?"

"Oh invade me with your scalding mouth,search me if you like, with your nocturnal eyes,but allow me to sail and sleep upon your name."

"I loved you without knowing it, and I looked for your memory.In empty houses I entered with a lantern to steal your portrait."